


Innocents Lost

by pontmercy44



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Attachments are forbidden... whoops, Coming of Age, F/M, First Love, Jedi rumspringa, Rey is 18, Why Does Everyone Want to Go Back to Jakku?, in-universe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-14
Updated: 2017-03-10
Packaged: 2018-09-17 11:50:21
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 22
Words: 52,645
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9322286
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pontmercy44/pseuds/pontmercy44
Summary: “That’ll scar.” Han stood behind him, nervously. He’d always been nervous around him, first, because he was a baby, and Han didn’t understand babies, and then, because he had the Force, and Han didn’t understand the Force. “Girls like scars.”“It’s not like it matters.” Ben looked out at the thousands of spires. “I’m going to be a Jedi.”Han grunted in sympathy, and then sat next to him, swinging his legs off the side of the tower. The urge to feel alive, to take risks and taste danger – that was what he’d inherited from his father. “Heard you got off the hook.”“Not exactly. Community service.”“Better than a detention block.” Han leaned back on his hands.Ben scoffed. “It’s asinine.”His father shifted, looking up at the stars, through the hazy, translucent atmosphere of Hosnian Prime. “What do they have you doing? Picking up orbit pollution, or something?”“Worse.” Ben snorted. “Teaching orphans to read and write Basic. On Jakku.”Han winced. “Only slightly better than a detention block.”





	1. Chapter 1

“You stole a speeder.”

“Borrowed.” Ben Solo kept a perfectly straight face. Keeping a straight face was difficult, in this particular moment, because he had a strip of bacta and gauze bisecting his face, diagonally. He’d cultivated a diplomatic, neutral voice from years of repressing all – or most – of his innate personality traits under his uncle’s tutelage, and that helped. That, and having a politician for a mother.  “I _borrowed_ a speeder.”

“Han!” His mother’s voice pitched up, and she spun around to face the other man in the room. Both of them towered over her, but this one looked a little cowed by the ferocity on her face.

“Ben.” His father tried to sound stern, and failed. He ran a hand over his graying hair, awkwardly. Being a disciplinarian was not his strength. Being a parent wasn’t his strength, truth be told. “… What model?”

“Han!” Leia looked like she was about to spontaneously combust. The intricate bun her hair was wound into trembled with rage. “You are _not helpful_.”

“Sorry.” Han muttered. He rubbed the back of his neck, looking at Ben. He seemed conflicted between commiserating with his son, which was what he wanted to do, and scolding him, which was what he knew he should do. He settled for uneasy silence.

“What were you thinking?” Leia looked back at Ben when Han couldn’t seem to make up his mind; Ben jumped. He thought his mother’s wrath had been, at least temporarily, diverted to his father.

“What was I drinking?”

“Ben!” His mother’s eyes welled with frustrated tears, and then he felt badly. “Did you – did you use…”

“No.” Ben lied. He had. He’d accessed that well of energy that itched under his fingertips constantly, gently prodding the Ithorian’s mind. Humanoids were even easier for him than humans to influence. They spoke his language, and they bent easily to his will. _What was the access code to the Ithorian’s speeder’s door? Could he use it? Take it out for a spin? Yes?_

It was so easy. Even when he was drunk. Unfortunately, he’d crashed the speeder into a skybridge, screeching and scraping along it in the dead hunk of metal that was the destroyed speeder, barely missing pedestrians, and barely avoiding skidding off the edge into oblivion. He’d climbed out of the hulk of metal with singed clothes, a nasty laceration across his face, and bruised ribs. The Republic City Security Force had been on the scene remarkably quickly – the droids were automated, after all – and he’d been escorted to security headquarters, where a medical droid patched up his face, rudimentarily, and young sergeant scowled at him until he sobered up.

Han had come to pick him up. He’d been gallivanting across the galaxy, as usual. Leia must have contacted him and told him, in no uncertain terms, to _come home and deal with his son._

They’d been silent in the transport on the way to Leia’s apartment. The only thing Han had said was, “Turned it into scrap metal, didn’t you?”

That was the part of this escapade that disappointed his father the most – that he’d crashed the speeder. His father, who had taught him to fly, and fly well. Even with a few glasses of Corellian whisky in his belly. Perhaps he’d had a few too many glasses of that to be flying a stolen speeder.

Ben’s mother was looking at him like she didn’t believe his lie. Perhaps she could sense the lie in the Force. He held her gaze steadily and made his mind opaque. His simultaneous effort to ease her mind was almost subconscious, but after a moment, she noticed it.

Her brow creased. “Stop that.”

“Stop what?” Ben asked, innocently.

“Stop what?” Han echoed, truly confused.

Leia ignored him and Han huffed in irritation. This wasn’t an uncommon occurrence, from what Ben could gather in the sparse time he’d spent observing his parents interact.

Ben and his mother could communicate, and understand each other, on a plane that Han wasn’t at all privy to. From a very early age, Ben had been aware of this, and aware of her. Before he could speak Basic, he’d projected his thoughts to her. They’d spoken their own language, in their own heads, a language not really comprised of words, until he was nine years old.

Han didn’t _have_ the Force. He didn’t feel a web of energy stretching out from himself to other Force-sensitives. He didn’t feel his wife or son’s Force signatures, or the subtle changes in them. In some ways, it created a rift in their family structure. It certainly had in Ben’s relationship with Han.

“You could be put in a detention block for this.” Leia narrowed her eyes at him. Suddenly, she looked more senatorial than maternal.

“No, I won’t.” Ben crossed his arms over his chest. He knew he sounded imperious, but he’d inherited that from _her._ “Senator’s sons don’t get put in detention blocks.”

Leia hissed between her teeth. “I could pull a few strings.”

“To keep me out of a detention block?” Ben knew he didn’t have to nudge Leia’s mind to ask her to intervene on his behalf. She’d be embarrassed if he was put away. It would hurt the family business – politics.

“To put you in one.” Leia snarled, to his surprise. “Where you can’t hurt yourself or _anyone else_.”

Ben felt heat rise in his cheeks, all of the sudden.

He’d been sent away, at nine years old, for that very reason. _So that he wouldn’t hurt anyone_. He still remembered his mother saying that.

When he was six, a boy had taken away his stuffed Loth-Cat toy. The boy had held his chubby little hands over his ears and yelped when Ben glared at him. He’d dropped the toy. It hadn’t been _fun_ , exactly. But it had been satisfying. It was the first time he’d used the Force, other than to communicate with his mother and levitate random household objects.

Sometimes, he did things on purpose. Sometimes, he didn’t. At first, he hadn’t realized that his screaming and anger coincided to strange occurrences - every window shattered for three floors of their apartment complex, people developing splitting headaches, droids breaking.

And then, one day, when he was nine, he’d cut off the air into someone’s lungs. He vaguely remembered doing it, flexing his hand, amazed by his own power. It had been an accident. He hadn’t known he _could_ do it. What he remembered with great clarity was his mother’s face, afterwards. He’d expected her to be angry. She hadn’t been. She’d sobbed, holding him close to her. He’d been confused. She _should_ have been angry.

The next day, she’d sent him away on a transport, to Yavin 4, and to his uncle.

Now, Leia seemed to know she’d gone too far. “Ben – ”

“Don’t.” He shrugged off her hand, and stormed out the door. He saw, out of the corner of his eye, a vase wobble and fall off a shelf across the room, crashing onto the floor.

***

The spire of his mother’s building pierced Republic City’s clouds. Ben climbed it at night to think, bathed in the golden glow of millions of lights. He dangled his leg over the edge, leaning back on his hand, and looked out at the city. It was sleepily coming to life as the sun set, buzzing with all manner of life forms. The pressure of it all weighed on his ear drums. He was used to the quiet of Yavin 4 – it’s rainforest, the hum of rainstorms in the distance, the buzz of insects in the swamps.

His parent’s visits to Yavin 4 had been few and far in between. More often than not, Leia would come, but not Han. If Han did come, they barely had anything to say to each other.

Hosnian Prime was nothing like Yavin 4. That was the _point_. Ben hadn’t dared asked his uncle if he could go to Hosnian Prime. He’d known what the answer would be. He’d asked his mother, who’d asked his uncle. Uncle Luke could never deny Leia, and she said she wanted a few weeks with her son before he split off from the rest of his uncle’s students and studied more seriously. He was old enough for that, almost twenty-three.

His uncle had disapproved. Then again, his uncle seemed to have a look of disapproval permanently affixed to his face. Ben had ignored it, clambered up the gangplank of a transport, and high-tailed to the Hosnian System.

He wasn’t here because he wanted to see his parents. He was here to be away from Luke, the other students, and, most of all, the confines of the Jedi Code. For eleven years he’d lived under it, isolated from the other students because of his propensity for _accidents_ , admonished that he needed to _control himself_. He couldn’t swear, do pinwheels in an old x-wing, watch dirty holovids, or experiment with alcohol, except on his father’s infrequent visits. Then, they’d take the Falcon out for a few days and he could try whisky, and taste how new swear-words felt on the tip of his tongue, and masturbate in his bunk without the shame of wondering if someone could sense what he was doing.

Maybe crashing the speeder had been a blessing in disguise. He’d accepted his sentence from the New Republic Magistrate Court that morning. It meant more time away from his uncle. More time to _live._

He could sense a thousand souls within meters of where he sat – humans, humanoids, creatures that didn’t even resemble humans. He wondered if any of the humans were girls. Perhaps it was silly, but he was twenty-two years old, and he wanted to meet a _girl_.

He’d met girls, of course, on Yavin 4. A few of them were even his age, or close enough that he had a modicum of interest. But they were all equally self-serious and uninterested in him. They never got distracted during meditation, or laughed at his jokes. They didn’t like his flippancy or sarcasm. They took the Code _seriously_. Most of them seemed afraid of him, but were too stoic to say it.

He was not a monk. Not yet. He was twenty-two, and a virgin, to his private embarrassment, but he wasn’t a Jedi yet.

In Republic City, there were cantinas, skin shows, bars – every matter of temptation. Ben ventured to them, alone, and prodded hopefully at the minds of women and girls who glanced at him. He did it so gently they didn’t even feel it, so he only got scraps of their thoughts. _Ears. Tall._ _Something not quite right –_

Maybe hearing _that_ over and over was what had led to the drinking, and the unfortunate speeder incident. Flying made him feel alive and reckless, the way that he hoped sex might.

He could have pushed into their minds a little more, and planted something there to make them like him. It would have been easy – as easy as stealing the speeder, and he certainly wasn’t above that. But sex was different. He wanted to earn it, to know that he was _actually_ wanted. If he had more time, he would have wanted to fall in love. He wanted to know what that was like, before he surrendered himself to the ascetic life of a Jedi Knight. It would be the ultimate, final act of rebellion to fall in love.

But at the very least, he wanted some memory to hold onto so that when he felt like he was dying inside, smothered by the choices his mother and uncle had made for him, he could know that once, he had lived.

“That’ll scar.” Ben sensed his father’s approach before he heard his voice; he made no effort to turn away from the ledge. Han stood behind him, nervously. He’d always been nervous around him, first, because he was a baby, and Han didn’t understand babies, and then, because he had the Force, and Han didn’t understand the Force. “Girls like scars.”

“It’s not like it matters.” Ben looked out at the thousands of spires surrounding them. He couldn’t help the bitter spike in his voice, thinking of his abysmal failures in that department. Perhaps he would die a virgin, he thought, ruefully. “I’m going to be a Jedi.”

Han grunted in sympathy, and then sat next to him, swinging his legs off the side of the tower, too. The urge to feel alive, to take risks and taste danger – _that_ was what he’d inherited from his father. “Heard you got off the hook.”

“Not exactly. Community service.”

“Better than a detention block.” Han leaned back on his hands.

Ben scoffed, looking at his feet, and the long way down below them. “It’s asinine.”

His father shifted, looking up at the stars, through the hazy, translucent atmosphere of Hosnian Prime. “What do they have you doing? Picking up orbit pollution, or something?”

“Worse.” Ben snorted. That wouldn’t be so bad – he could fly. “Teaching orphans to read and write Basic. On Jakku.”

Han winced. “Only slightly better than a detention block.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you're here because you've read my AU's - welcome back! If you're new - hello, hello! This is my first in-universe piece. The plot bunny bit me, hard, but in-universe fiction requires a bit more research, so feel free to point out anything that seems amiss. The best thing about fan-fiction is that it is collaborative and social, so I would love your feedback throughout. 
> 
> P.S. It may not be immediately clear from the tags, title, or even the first few chapters, but this is not a particularly light and fluffy piece. Not that it's a total downer, but it is serious and adult in nature and in content. 
> 
> P.P.S. Yes, I know the expression is "innocence lost"... it's a pun.


	2. Chapter 2

The New Republic transport settled over the surface of the sandy planet in a lumbering kind of way, kicking up sand for hundreds of meters. It created its own little sandstorm, covering Niima Outpost briefly, toppling tents and rickety buildings.

On the ridge west of the outpost, Rey yanked up her scarf to cover her mouth before the ripple of sand reached her. She braced against it, looking through her grey-tinted, foggy goggles at the ship. It was ungraceful and ugly, long and wide and flat. She’d seen one like it before, about a year ago by the marks on the wall of the AT-AT she called home.

The other ship had brought rations – better ones than she could buy on Jakku. People with nervous, pitying smiles had handed them out. These people didn’t look like people from Jakku – they were clean, and they wore clothes that _weren’t_ the color of sand – and they did something no one from Jakku would do. They gave away portions and water without expecting anything in return.

In a way, Rey hated these people. She hated the way they looked at her and how flippant they were about precious resources. She took their charity begrudgingly because it would be foolhardy not to. She couldn’t afford to be proud.

She’d approach this transport tomorrow, Rey decided. She’d bite her tongue and take the portions. She turned on the engine of her speeder and sat back on it, watching the sand settle. A ship that big coming in was enough of an event to keep her out and about, rather than in the relative safety of her AT-AT, later than normal. Nothing good happened after dark in Jakku, and it would be dark soon.

Rey gunned the engine and turned the bulky, front-heavy vehicle around, into the setting sun. Her home was a gutted shell, half-sunk in sand, but it only had one way in, and one way out. No one could sneak up behind her. She slept with her staff at her fingertips, and one ear pricked toward the door.

When she pulled up outside the AT-AT, she completed her normal surveillance. It was second-nature, after years and years of vigilance. It wasn’t until she’d circled the hulk of metal, and stood perfectly still, listening for something as minute as breathing, that her hackles dropped.

She’d come home more than once to an intruder waiting for her. Somehow, both times, she _knew_ they were inside the AT-AT, and _knew_ they were waiting for her, not just robbing her. She also knew why they were waiting for her. She wasn’t naive. It was no secret at Niima Outpost that she lived alone out in the desert.

She’d climbed nimbly up the AT-AT and perched silently atop it, like an Aurean vulture, to wait the intruders out. She was patient. More patient than they were. Both intruders had eventually given up and left in a barrage of profanity, taking only her stash of portions, and for that, she knew, she was lucky.

Rey was alone, now. She exhaled, slowly, as the sunk sank below the horizon, and then ducked inside the wreck. It took a moment for her eyes to adjust but she moved around, anyways. She knew where everything was. Her hands flew to the little stove, igniting it.

In the glow of the stove, she could see every mark she’d made on the wall of her little home. She fingered the rough piece of metal she used to make them. She was reluctant to make a mark every night. It meant one more day had passed.

At least the days passed quickly. The nights passed slowly.

***

The next morning, Rey went back to the transport. Already, sand had blown up and settled against the sides of it, as if it had been on Jakku for weeks, not hours. People in white tunics decorated with a blocky blue cross, the universal symbol for aid, were struggling to set up a crisp, white tent in the high winds. Nothing stayed white in Jakku. They’d learn that soon enough.

Others were milling about. They weren’t in the clean white tunics of the New Republic Relief Mission, but they were just as clearly not from Jakku. They looked well-fed and as if they didn’t know quite what to do with themselves.

Rey waited for others to come line up under the tent for portions before she came down off the ridge. She wouldn’t be the first person to take a handout. She stood behind a prostitute – more reputable than a skin girl, because a prostitute was an entrepreneur and a skin girl was just a slave – and a moisture farmer. They looked as shamed as she felt. Jakku natives were a poor but proud bunch. They were also pragmatic, and knew hard times would come again, if they weren’t already here.

She’d hide these New Republic portions, Rey decided, and pray no one raided her AT-AT. She’d keep them in case of an emergency. She fidgeted nervously in line, wanting nothing more than to take her portions and slink away from all these curious eyes.

The nape of her neck prickled, the way it did when something or someone dangerous was nearby. She’d learned long ago – a dislocated shoulder, hundreds of bruises, and one near scrape with a lecherous Crolute ago – to trust that feeling. Her fingers tightened on her staff, flexing around it.

She should have stayed still, the way one did to avoid detection fellow scavengers in the vast wrecks of Star Destroyers. Some scavengers weren’t above killing to protect what they’d found and claimed as their own. A slow, subtle tilt of her head to the left – and she was _sure_ the threat was to her left – would hopefully go unnoticed.

Rey turned her head too sharply, and the man – _boy?_ – saw her look at him. He didn’t react at all, almost as if he’d expected her to eventually realize he was watching her. He was a human, but very tall for a human, and very… _strange._ Something about him was not normal, she couldn’t say what, but no one else seemed to notice it.

Rey had gotten in the habit of talking to herself inside her head, after years of solitude. Now, it was as if she was talking to herself, frantically saying _run, run run_ , but her body wasn’t listening. Her knees locked and trembled, and she stood stock still.

As if he could smell her fear, the boy raised his hands slowly above his head, palms up. His lips quirked, as if he was _amused_ by her fear.

Her fear was what had kept her alive all these years. Her fear and, oxymoronically, her fearlessness. She sucked in a deep, sandy lungful of air and stared him down, nostrils flaring, until he backed away into the heavy shadow of the transport.

***

The next day, when Rey slunk to the transport to get more portions, she was immediately aware of the boy. She felt the warning low in her belly as she traipsed over the ridge, and something else, like a string was hooked behind her naval and was tugging her faster and faster down the sandy slope.

The boy was waiting for her, this time. He knew she was coming. She eyed him cautiously as she approached. She wasn’t quite able to tell if he was a boy – he was _huge_ , like a man, well-fed and muscular – but there was something very young about his face. It was an asymmetrical, sensitive face, graced with a soft mouth and framed by inky, almost angelic curls. Those features made him less threatening.

When Rey got to the front of the line, he looked at her intently for a minute, as if he thought he recognized her. He was holding what she’d come for. Portions. He seemed to have forgotten that he was supposed to _hand_ them to her. “What is your name?”

His voice was deeper than his face suggested it might be. Even in uttering just four words, it sounded more sophisticated than anyone on Jakku’s did. “It’s none of your business.”

The boy didn’t seem offended. If anything, he seemed as amused by her defiance as he had by her fear. “Should I try to guess it?”

“No.”

He showed his teeth then. They were very white but a little crooked. She blinked, surprised at how appealing his smile made him. It had been a long time since she’d seen a smile. “If I guess it correctly, you’ll have to tell me something else about yourself.”

Rey huffed, gritting her teeth. She’d almost smiled back, but _no_. She wouldn’t smile at this boy who seemed intent on teasing her. He held the packaged portion between two fingers, as if to entice her to humor him and not walk away. His arm did not extend towards her. She’d have to come to _him_ to grab it. “Your name is Rey. Isn’t it?”

Rey recoiled. “How do you know my name?”

The boy ignored her question. There was something strangely excited about his face. He held it perfectly straight, but his eyes were smiling. “Can you guess my name?”

“No.”

“I think you can.”

 _Delusional_ , Rey decided. A soft inner-Rim boy made crazy by the heat and beating sun. “I don’t _care_ what your name is.”

She was brave enough – or angry enough at being toyed with – to snatch the portions from him. She spun on her heel and walked away, trying to keep her steps even an unhurried. _Never let a predator know that you are scared of it._

She stopped still in her tracks, ten paces away, feeling something tickle the inside of her ear. _Ben._

His name was Ben. Rey didn’t know how she knew, but she suddenly did, with as much certainty as if he’d whispered it in her ear in his low, unusual voice. She didn’t dare look back. As she broke into a run, she realized her temples had begun to throb.

***

At dusk, Rey stopped short some hundred meters from her AT-AT. Someone was here, waiting for her. Not inside her AT-AT, but on the other side of it, in the long shadow cast by the setting sun. She knew it with the certainty she’d known about the two other intruders, even at this distance.

She parked her speeder, laden down with what she hadn’t been able to sell, and ran, bent low, across the sand. She crept to the side of the AT-AT and silently climbed the rungs on the side of the metal beast’s overturned body until she was perched atop it. She could wait. All she’d done, her whole life, was wait. Nothing changed – not the seasons, not the horizon, not her prospects.

Something thrummed in her abdomen, almost like excitement. She flattened out on her belly on the sun-heated metal roof, feeling it burn her through her clothes. If she slid further across it, just a bit more, she could see who had come for her. She could smack them across the back of the skull with her staff, maybe, from her vantage point.

 _I know you’re up there._ The half-imagined voice tickled her ear again.

“How?” She answered, out loud, before she could stop herself.

The boy from the New Republic stepped away from the shadow of the AT-AT and turned to face her. In all black and gray, he’d stuck out like a sore thumb during the day. Now, in the dusk, he almost disappeared. He was nearly tall enough to speak to her face-to-face. “I could feel you.” His lips twitched. “You could feel me here, too.”

“I – ” Rey sputtered, and then shut her mouth. Maybe he was still close enough for her to whack him with her staff, even if she didn’t have the element of surprise. His eyes flickered to her weapon, as if he suspected she might hit him. “You’re addled in the head. You’ve been in the sun too long.”

“How did you know I was back here, waiting for you?” He challenged. He stepped closer to the AT-AT and planted his hands on it, looking up at her with naked curiosity on his narrow face. “You’re like _me_.”

“I’m not…” Rey stood up on top of the AT-AT so she could look down at him. “I have good instincts. You have to, to survive out here.” She wasn’t sure why she was explaining herself. She felt inexplicably defensive, and spoke too fast.

“You have more than good instincts.” The boy tilted his head back, looking her up and down in a way that made her stomach clench nervously. He looked simultaneously awed and appraising. She swallowed hard and tried to stare him down, but it was _hard_. He barely _blinked._ “You really don’t know, do you?”

The prickle at the back of Rey’s neck was gone, and her instincts – because that was _all it was_ , she told herself, fiercely – told her that this boy posed no real threat. She slid down the side of the AT-AT and ducked into the door, slamming it shut.

He didn’t try to follow her, but this time, when she felt a tickle inside her ear, she knew, with a sinking feeling, that it was his voice. He was pleading with her. He wanted her to come back outside. He sounded almost – lonely.

_Please. Don’t be afraid._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ben Solo has no chill and is bad at flirting. Rey is not having it.
> 
> P.S. I narrowed the age gap in this story to 4 years - Rey is 18, and Ben is 22.


	3. Chapter 3

__

_Idiot._

Ben had tried to impress the girl, and he’d ended up scaring her. What’s worse, once she’d regained her wits, she’d decided he was lacking _his_. She thought he was a crazy person. She might as well have shouted it, for as loudly as she was thinking it. _Stupid, stupid, stupid._

The girl – Rey – had the Force, but none of the serenity or sterility of a Jedi. Her Force signature didn’t feel like a barely-rippling pond, like Luke’s or his fellow students. It was like a storm in a glass bottle, self-contained but slamming violently against the sides, wanting to get out. She felt _alive_ inside. It was the first time he’d encountered such a creature.

And she was an enchanting creature. Ben didn’t even bother lying to himself and pretending she was an object of fascination only because of her Force-sensitivity. She didn’t look like she belonged on Jakku. She looked like she belonged – well, with him, his baser self supplied – anywhere _but_ Jakku.

He’d dreamed of Rey. He felt that because he knew something about her no one else knew, not even her, he _knew_ her, and could use her first name. He wondered what _Rey’s_ hair looked like under that dusty head-scarf. He wondered if _Rey’s_ neck was thin, if her stomach was paler, untouched by the sun, under all those layers of harsh fabric. He wondered if _Rey’s_ nipples were dusty pink, like her lips, or if that was just dust on her lips. He’d dreamed up answers to all those questions.

Ben glowered down at his penis, annoyed by its morning exuberance. His dreams had ended on an inopportune note.

He reached for the lock on the thin plastic  door that made his bunk at least somewhat private. He could sense that his bunkmates were still asleep. It was a habit to check. Privacy was a luxury on Yavin 4, considering how many Force-sensitives inhabited it. Before he could flip the dial-shaped lock, he hesitated.

He shouldn’t. He knew what he would think about while he did it.

The snap of the lock was loud in the quiet crew bunk. Ben held his breath for a moment, wondering if someone had heard it.

No one woke up. He pushed the tent of his scratchy gray sheet away and yanked the top of his briefs down over his erection, gripping it with a stifled grunt of relief. As he moved his hand up and down jerkily, he bit his lip to keep quiet. Since no-one around had the Force – he’d known that the moment he’d stepped on the transport – all he had to worry about was _actual_ noise.

Except – his hand stopped for a second, along with his heart.

What if _she_ felt it?

 _Impossible_ , he thought, uneasily, beginning his rhythm again. It was a familiar enough rhythm despite lack of opportunity on Yavin 4, but his hand still caught awkwardly on his skin as he panicked a little. She was at least two or three thousand meters away, and hopefully, fast asleep in her sad little hovel.

But – he’d _told_ her she was able to sense him from a distance. What if she’d believed him, despite her frosty behavior? What if she’d spend the night experimenting with her nascent powers?

He let go of his cock as if it had burned his palm. The idea of that beautiful girl knowing he was pathetically masturbating to her was too much. It didn’t douse the fire of his arousal, but it did light his cheeks up with embarrassment.  

Staring at the close ceiling of his bunk, Ben swore in a way that would make his father proud. He swore a little too loudly. Someone around him woke up, at that. He sat up, instinctively covering his lap with his sheet, even though his bunk was locked, and whacked his head on the durasteel ceiling.

He swore again, this time even louder, and woke up half the bunk.

***

Ben was tasked with teaching the Basic alphabet to a gaggle of human, Nu-Cosian, and Melitto younglings that morning. He’d already given up hope that Rey would venture back to the portions line, so he didn’t protest when the community service supervisor, a smug Twi’lek, gave him his assignment.

The younglings were too hungry to focus on learning letters. Ben huffed an admonition to them – stay put, or else – and went to the rations tent. He rummaged in a crate for some dehydrated meat and broth base. Surely that wouldn’t be missed. If it was – well, he was a thief’s son.

The base of his spine tingled as he bent over the crate, and he slowly straightened. Rey was watching him. Without turning around, he observed, “You came back.”

“I came back to get portions.” Ben turned around. The girl was lying – even if he hadn’t been Force-sensitive and particularly gifted at sensing people’s thoughts and emotions, he would have known that. A flush crept up the side of her neck, just above the collar of her tunic. That, and she already had said portions tucked into the pouch at her waist. The lie encouraged him. He looked back at his pupils, perched on plasteel stools under the shade-tent, solemnly. They were all younger – or at least they looked younger, it was hard to tell with some life-forms – than she was.

“Can you read and write Basic?”

Her eyes flashed. “Basic, and four other languages.”

Ben winced. He’d offended her, insulted her intelligence. _Of course_ he had. She was smart and beautiful. Because _of course_ she was. “I could teach you… other things.”

Rey scoffed, but she rocked back on her heels and crossed her arms over her skinny chest. After a moment, Ben realized she was waiting for him to prove it. He could feel her curiosity, a bit tentative but persistent, hanging heavy in the air between them. 

Ben didn’t think before he moved: he just reached out and yanked her staff out of her grip and into the air, drawing it towards him. She was quick – her hands tightened around the weapon as it left her hand – but not quick enough.

At first, she looked angry. _Stupid._ He should have known she’d hate to be disarmed. The staff settled into his hands, light as a feather, and then suddenly heavy when he dropped it. He held it out to her, wordlessly, in a peace-making gesture.

To his surprise, Rey didn’t stalk over and snatch it back, or call him a thief, or worse, a crazy person. She approached him cautiously, as if afraid he’d whip the staff out of her reach again. When he didn’t, she wrapped her hands around it, just inside the parenthesis of his larger hands. The sides of her smallest fingers brushed his thumb. They both held the weapon for a moment, and then Ben relinquished it, swallowing hard and stepping back.

The girl studied the weapon, then him. “How did you do that?”

It was a simple trick, really, one he’d been able to do since infancy. But it impressed her and that made his chest puff a little. “Would you like me to show you?”

She didn’t seem to have heard him. Her eyes suddenly lit up.

“Can you…” She looked young, and hopeful, and he would have said _yes_ to whatever her question was. “Can you lift other things? Bigger things?”

***

Rey was waiting for him when the late-afternoon shadows grew long. She had a beat-up, almost rusted out old speeder next to her. It was a clunky old model, slow for sure, and it dwarfed her. He almost laughed when he saw her stroke its metal flank proudly.

She nodded brusquely in greeting, and then swung herself up onto the monstrosity, holding out her hand as if she – all one hundred or so pounds of her – could lift him up behind her. Now, he really did laugh out loud.

“What?” She kept her arm out. “I’m stronger than I look.”

Ben decided that this peculiar girl would be offended if he suggested she was anything less than herculean, so he didn’t argue. “I’m driving.”

Offended again, the girl drew herself up to her full height, and withdrew the offer of her arm. “It’s my speeder.”

He swung up behind her on the speeder and suddenly discovered his predicament. The hunk of metal wasn’t designed to seat more than one. Rey was perched on the solitary seat. He was straddling sloping, hot metal, with nothing for purchase. Behind him was a few inches more of metal and then a six foot fall to the sand. In front of him was… her.

She looked over her shoulder at him, something wicked in her eyes as she gunned the engine. That took him off guard. “Unless you want sand-burn, I suggest you hold on.”

“Hold on to _what_ – _kriff_.” He flung his arms around her waist just in time as the rust bucket jolted forward. “This thing can _go_.”

“I built it myself.” Even yelling against the wind, there was a glow of pride in her voice. “She’s a beauty, isn’t she?”

“I didn’t say that.” Ben hollered back. _But you are._ He wished he had the courage to say that out loud, or push it gently towards her mind. He suddenly felt self-conscious about the size of his hands and arms. He’d always been big for his age. As a boy, he’d just assumed everyone else would catch up. They didn’t. When his arms locked, one on top of the other, around Rey’s midsection, the top arm brushed the underside of her breasts, and the bottom arm touched her hip-bones. He felt like he might crush her, or worse, accidentally touch her breasts.

It would be a happy accident, at least until she broke his fingers with that staff.

He took deep breaths and tried to focus on the landscape. But the landscape was boring – just endless sand dunes – and what was in his arms was _interesting_ , to say the least. He wondered if she could feel the shape of his body with as much clarity as he could feel hers. If she could feel his _interest_ against her spine, at least she couldn’t see his red cheeks. Small blessings.

She'd taken off her head-scarf. Her hair was darker than he'd imagined, looped into three buns. It was tantalizingly close to his nose. Her hips fit snugly in between his thighs, her backside wedged firmly against his crotch. It was small and firm and wiggled a little as she steered the speeder and _kriff_ , he should have finished jerking off that morning. He’d have to tonight now, and he’d think about this, about having a pretty girl pressed against him.

Ben’s voice cracked painfully when he leaned in to ask in her ear, “Where are you taking me?”

Rey half-turned her cheek back to him, and he saw her profile. She was half-smiling. “I thought you could read my mind.”

***

“This is the Crackle.” Rey announced, surveying the massive keel of an Imperial starship, half-submerged in sand. Ben squinted around the starship graveyard, a hand over his eyes.

“Crackle?”

Rey took a step onto the blackened sand surrounding the wreck. It shattered like glass under her boot. “Crackle.”

“I see.” Ben toed the ground with his boot. The sand must have turned to glass with the heat of the starship’s impact. It was eerie to hear it shattering out in the silent desert. “There’s… nothing out here.”

Rey looked offended again – _why_ did he keep doing that? – and crossed her arms over her skinny chest. “ _Everything_ is out here, if you know where to look.”

“What do you mean?”

Rey started to walk with purpose across the Crackle. “Follow me.”

***

They made their way inside the hull of the Imperial ship’s keel, Rey more nimbly than Ben. She was smaller, he told himself, grumpily, as he struggled to keep up. She fit into narrow spaces more easily. Less limbs to deal with.

Still, he got the feeling she was showing off. That annoyed him a little, but excited him more. She’d only show off in front of him if – if she _liked_ him.

“What are you, a sand monkey?”

“A what?” Rey paused, innocently, hanging off a metal beam.

“A sand monkey.”

“What’s a sand monkey?”

“It’s… it’s hairy, and it has long arms.”

“ _Excuse_ me?”

“It’s good at climbing.” Ben defended himself, feeling his cheeks heat up. He could practically see his father’s eyes rolling. _Smooth. Call her hairy and long-armed_. “It’s from Genisaria.”

“I’ve never been there.” Rey dropped off the metal bar and suddenly looked subdued, and even a bit self-conscious of her own nativity. “I’ve never left Jakku, at least not for as long as I can remember.”

Ben cleared his throat awkwardly. “You’re not missing much. This is the best and most beautiful planet in the entire galaxy.”

Rey laughed at that, to his surprise. He wasn’t used to girls laughing at his jokes. She tucked a piece of hair behind her ear, and he wondered if he’d been right, if Jakku really _was_ the most beautiful planet in the galaxy.

“To answer your question, though, I’m not a sand monkey.” Rey kept picking her way through the wreckage. She stopped short in front of a massive sheet of durasteel, some fifteen meters long and twenty meters high, which had crumpled in on itself, blocking the way. “I’m a scavenger.”

“What’s a scavenger?” He teased, echoing her question about sand monkeys.

Rey gestured to the huge hunk of durasteel blocking their way. She tilted her chin up in a challenge. “Lift that, and I’ll show you.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Awkward Hard-Ons: A Love Story.


	4. Chapter 4

The muscles in Ben’s back moved under his shirt, even though he wasn’t using them to lift the durasteel. He spread out his palms, legs spread and planted, fingers slowly splaying out, and Rey would have thought he looked silly if she hadn’t heard the loud crunch of durasteel.

The sheet of metal shuddered, reluctantly, and then, as his hands moved, it _moved._ It shuddered, and metal-on-metal squealed, but the hunk shifted towards them. Rey stumbled back, suddenly afraid he would drop it on her, but he didn’t. He set the sheet down with what could only be described as gentleness.

Rey blinked at him. Taking the staff from her had been unsettling, and confusing. It was the kind of thing that made her wonder whether she’d been out in the sun too long, or skimping on water, like his voice in her head. _This_ was something completely different. It was a miracle.

If _she_ could do that – if what he said was true –

Rey shook off that thought. It would do her no good to have delusions of grandeur. She’d survived this long by keeping her head down, staying anonymous, and scavenging.

Ben turned back to her, flexing his hands. He looked down the dim hull of the ship, and then gestured, in an odd, courtly way that reminded her he was an educated, upper-class boy from some rich, resource-rich planet. His voice cracked endearingly. “After you.”

There wasn’t much in the starship graveyard that was unscathed. The virgin pocket of starship behind the durasteel barrier was a veritable treasure trove. It was an old technical bay, ripe to be striped of wires, gears, and tools. She’d been itching to get into it for _years._ If she could keep this place a secret, only smuggling things out under cover of night, she’d be _rich_ in portions, the scavenger’s currency.

Many scavengers had tried to move the durasteel door before. They’d hitched speeders to it and pulled, burning out their engines. They’d even teamed up to try and manually move it – and it was a rare thing indeed for scavengers to work together or to ask for help.

It was unlike _her_ , too.

Rey snuck a glance over her shoulder at Ben. He’d hung back as she’d scrambled into the technical bay. There was a bit of sweat on the front of his shirt, barely visible against the black fabric. She wondered if it was physically taxing, to move things without touching them, or whether he was just hot, unused to Jakku’s climate. The moisture made the fabric stick to his skin in a strangely appealing way.

She could tell he was unimpressed by their spoils.

“What do you see?” She asked him.

He shrugged. “Not much.”

“I see a tool kit, a jumper bypass…” She looked around a bit more. “A flare gun, a power calibrator, plenty of wires and cables, a few batteries.”

“What do you need a flare gun for?” Ben’s face was straight, but she sensed he was laughing at her.

“I’m a scavenger. I find things.” She rooted around in an open wall panel for a moment, and then pulled out a coppery wire, coiling it around her hand. “And then I sell them to Unkar Plutt.”

“Who’s Unkar Plutt?”

“He’s… he’s the boss.” It was difficult to explain Unkar Plutt – her warden, her overlord, her debt-holder.

“Says who?” The boy challenged.

Rey snorted. “ _He_ does, and _he_ has the portions and the water recycler.”

Ben frowned. “The New Republic distributes portions and water packets every day.”

Rey almost laughed at his naivety. “You’ll leave, soon, and then he’ll have everyone under his thumb again.” She heard her voice through his ears, and hated how bitter she sounded. She’d never met her life in Jakku with much bitterness before, but meeting him, a boy from the Inner Rim, a boy with credits, and opportunity, who had seen planets where they had _sand monkeys_ , made her bitter.

“You could leave, too.” Ben supplied, as if he’d sensed her thoughts– he probably had, she realized. “You could go anywhere you want, be anything you want.”

Rey fiddled with the flare gun, wondering whether she should keep it in case she needed to scare someone off by firing it in their face, or see how many portions it would fetch. “Me? I’m nobody.”

“You have the Force.” He spoke with the fervor of a religious fanatic, and Rey almost burst into near-hysterical laughter.

“No, I don’t.” She gestured to the dislodged mass of durasteel. “I’ve been trying to move that thing for _years_.”

“People like us, we’re all good at different things.” Ben stepped closer. “Close your eyes.”

“This is stupid.” Rey closed her eyes anyways. Her more practical self wanted to be picking this technical bay apart, finding everything of value before some other opportunistic scavenger found it. But she could smell the tang of sweat on him, and something else, something distinctly human and male. She sucked in a deep breath.

“Where am I?”

“You’re right there.” Rey huffed, exasperated. “I can hear you talking.”

Suddenly, his voice tickled her inner ear. _Where am I now?_

Rey paused. He’d been utterly silent, but she was suddenly aware that he’d moved. She didn’t know it because of his breathing, or his footfalls, but because the gentle, warm pulse of his heartbeat. It radiated from somewhere else in the room. “You’re behind me.”

All of the sudden, Rey’s knees buckled, almost of their own accord. She ducked, without stopping to wonder _why_ , and a piece of scrap metal hurtled past her skull. Opening her eyes, she spun around, “Hey, _nerfherder_ , you almost hit me!”

“Nobody can sneak up on you, can they?” He really was standing behind her and he had another piece of metal in his hands – this time a pipe. “Close your eyes again.”

“What, so you can _throw_ that at me?” Rey asked, incredulous.

“You and I both know it won’t hit you.”

She closed her eyes, and he was right. It didn’t.

***  

“How long have you been able to read minds?” Rey asked him, over her shoulder, as she squatted and fingered the v-shaped metal of a jumper bypass.

“It’s not reading minds, exactly.” His voice echoed in the hollowed out ship. He was further down the hull, pretending to be helpful and keeping a lookout for other scavengers. “It’s… just being able to put myself inside people’s heads. I’ve been able to do it as long as I can remember.”

Rey kicked a piece of scrap metal aside, standing and examining the small pile of treasures at her feet. She’d have trouble fitting them all on her speeder, she knew, and somehow, she didn’t think Ben would agree to levitate them all the way to Niima Outpost. That would be… conspicuous.

Ben made a soft, amused noise, and something occurred to her. She turned to face him. He was watching her with more curiosity than poking around the ruins of an old ship warranted. “Are you in _my_ head all the time?”

His lips twitched up at the edges. “No.”

She frowned a little. That quirk of his lips told her he was not being quite truthful. “Are you right now?”

Ben stepped closer. “Do you want me to be?”

“No.” She felt her cheeks heat up, remembering how he smelled and the way his shirt stuck to his chest. She was only vaguely aware of the implications of thoughts like those, but she was aware of them enough to want to keep her thoughts private. “It’s embarrassing.”

He cocked his head at her, his gaze going slightly unfocussed for a moment. Apparently, her obvious embarrassment was too great a temptation, because he said, abruptly. “You’re very lonely.”

 “I told you not to!”

“You’ve never seen a human male your age before.” He smiled, unrepentantly. It made his eyes crinkle up in a nice way. “You’re not sure if all of us have big ears, or just me.”

Rey scowled. “Show off.”

He shrugged, and then froze mid-shrug. As if he’d realized something, his brows rose. Very slowly, sounding genuinely, surprised, he said, “You like my ears. You… like the way I look.”

“That’s _enough_.” Rey’s face burned with the heat of a thousand dying suns.

His eyes danced with mischief. “You’re thinking about kissing me.”

“I am not.” Rey blinked, her anger and embarrassment cut off and replaced with confusion. She really hadn’t been – she knew what kissing _was_ , in an intellectual sense. She’d seen a sappy holovid about it, once. What she didn’t know is why anyone would do it. He did have a nice mouth, though, she conceded. Pink and soft, like fruit she’d only seen once or twice. “You’re making that up.”

“You’re right, I am.” Ben stepped closer to her, forcing her to bend her neck backwards to look him in the eye. “But now you’re thinking about kissing me, aren’t you?”

Rey swallowed hard. _He’d_ put the idea there, _he’d_ brought it up. “That’s cheating– ”

His mouth was very warm and soft when he pressed it to hers, cutting her off. He didn’t seem to know how to kiss her, bending half-over her and holding her arms in his hands like she might run away if he didn’t. His mouth was clumsy and sloppy, and their teeth bumped noisily, but she’d been right, his lips _were_ soft.

Now, Rey understood why people kissed. It felt nice when his mouth moved over hers. Something nubby and wet touched her lower lip – his tongue, and _that_ was nice, too. Her hand found the nape of his neck, and pulled him closer. Tugged off-balance, he nearly fell.

They stared at each other. Even though _he’d_ been the one to kiss _her_ , Ben looked as shocked by this turn of events as she did. His mouth was hanging open, and he was still hunched over her. His breath came in hot huffs onto her face. Rey realized her mouth was hanging open, too. The skin around her lips felt wet, as if spit had smeared all over it when they’d missed each other’s mouths.

His thumb smoothed the moisture away, and when he kissed her again, he was already better at it.

***

The whistle of the wind was constant on Jakku. Rey knew it’s tempo and pitch. She knew when it was changing, and when it was bringing _X’us’R’iia_ – the sandstorms.

Stray pieces of sand were making gritty noises as the winds flung them against the side of the starship’s hull. The wind peaked upwards into a soprano as it came through the hole in the ship’s keel.

When Rey pulled away from Ben, she had to put her hand over his mouth to stop him from kissing her again. “We have to go.”

“What? Why?” Ben rasped against her fingers. He had her caged her in with his arms against the hull of the starship, hulking over her. His hair was hanging in his face, damp with sweat, and his mouth was bright red and swollen. Meteorites could have been falling from the sky and he would have been oblivious.

“We have to go, _now_.” Rey ducked under his arm. She looked at her treasures with despair. She’d have to leave them behind and hope the keel didn’t fill up with sand, and that another scavenger didn’t find them before she could come back.

If she hadn’t been kissing him, she thought, dully, she could have gotten some of the treasures onto her speeder. The day wouldn’t be a total loss. _Stupid boy and his stupid mouth –_

“Rey?” Ben was looking out a crack in the hull of the ship. “What is that?”

***

Ben’s long legs carried him across the sand faster than hers did. He threw himself onto her speeder, and for a sick moment, Rey thought he would take it and abandon her to the storm. He didn’t. He bent over the side of the speeder and wrapped an arm around her waist, hauling her up onto it.

They raced the sandstorm back to her AT-AT. It moved in a great rolling wave across the surface of the planet, lagging just a bit behind them. Still, the air was thick with sand by the time the speeder skidded to an ungraceful stop in front of the wreck.

“What are you doing?” Rey shouted, when Ben clambered off the speeder and _didn’t_ run in the direction of her AT-AT.

“I have to get back to the transport.” He yelled over the wind.

Rey would have laughed, if she didn’t think the idiot was serious. “You can’t go. You’ll get lost in the storm.”

“I have curfew.” Ben bellowed. “I’m here on community service.”

“What?” She’d only half heard him.

“I stole a speeder.” He grabbed her arm and yanked her towards him, startling her. When he kissed her, they got sand in their mouths. It would have been rough and quick even if it wasn’t gritty with sand, and then Ben disappeared into the swirling sand and darkness.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ben Solo is getting better at flirting, but Jakku weather is the ultimate cock-block. 
> 
> P.S. If you're loving this story, tell your friends! Tell your Tumblr followers! Tell your mom (not really, because... sex)!


	5. Chapter 5

The sand felt like shards of glass. It cut at his clothes and skin viciously. Ben couldn’t have seen two feet in front of him even if he’d been able to open his eyes. Panic nipped at his consciousness. Rey had been right – he’d be lost out in the sands, walking in circles for hours.

Meditation was not his strong suit. It never had been, to his uncle’s disappointment. He wasn’t good at meditating in a quiet, dim room, let alone in a howling sandstorm. Still, he let his limbs go fluid and emptied his mind, splaying his fingers by his thighs to let the excess energy and adrenaline flow out of him.

The wind quieted for a moment, at least in his head. His world centered, and he turned ninety-degrees, until he was facing in the right direction. Even without opening his eyes, he was _sure_ it was the right direction.

Ben put his head down, squeezed his eyes shut against the sand, and trudged onwards. He could imagine what his Uncle would say: _trust the Force, Ben._

He trusted he would make it to the transport.

***

In the morning, Ben’s skin burned like he’d been dipped in hot oil. He had sand in his teeth, his hair, his navel, between his fingers and toes. It lined his bunk. Every time he moved, it scraped his burned skin.

He moaned for bacta from his bunk, and when the rest of bunkmates had left for their first shift, his community service supervisor threw him a rough fabric towel, instead. He pulled it off his face, wincing at the way the loose threads chafed the sensitive bridge of his nose.

“The ship’s dry sonics will only make it worse.” The Twi’lek told him, sternly. She had a permanent scowl from dealing with delinquents. She threw a tube of bacta at his head, then. It clanged against the side of his metal bunk. “There’s a public ‘fresher in Niima Outpost. Cool water will feel better.”

Ben grunted, half in assent, half in pain, as he sat up. He forgot about the low berth – again – and smacked the top of his head on it. His ears rang mightily, though perhaps that was from the winds howling in his ear all night. Everything sounded very far away. “Kriffing hells –”

“Language, young man.” Ben muttered another profanity, under his breath, in defiance. “And, Solo.”

“What?”

“I didn’t report your curfew violation.” Ben swallowed hard, and braced his hands on the edge of his thin mattress, waiting for the other shoe to drop. He’d crept into his bunk almost an hour late. He’d thought no one had noticed, especially since the sandstorm had been so loud, but in retrospect, _of course_ she had. He’d missed mess, and evening head-count in the bunks. When he’d returned, he’d tracked in sand. Probably, someone had even seen him slip away with Rey in the late afternoon.

“Am I in trouble?” Ben heard how young he sounded. He sounded the way his uncle’s students did when they were scolded for even minor infractions. He knew his recent transgressions couldn’t be characterized as _minor,_ and winced.

The Twi’lik cocked her head at him, almost curiously. Her green, reptilian eyes narrowed. “Don’t let me catch you again.”

“No.” He answered, lamely. “It won’t happen again.”

“I don’t think you heard me.” The female cut him off. Twi’leks were hard to read, but he could have sworn she looked exasperated. “I said don’t let me _catch_ you again.”

“Oh.” Ben blinked at her, confused by her leniency. It wasn’t something he’d ever encountered on Yavin 4. There, _rules_ were elevated to the level of _code_ , and if anything, his uncle was more strict with him then the others. “I won’t.”

She nodded, satisfied, and then took something out of her waist-pack. She examined it for a second. “You were with the human scavenger girl, weren’t you?”

“Yes.” Ben admitted.

“I’ve seen her before. She was just a youngling a year or two ago.” The Twi’lek gave him an appraising look, and he squirmed. She passed the item back and forth in her hands a few times, and then gave it to him.

It was a square of plastic with two rows of four clear bubbles containing pink pills. He traced the two rows, and asked, “Is this for my burn?”

The Twi’lek gave him an odd look, and then realized he was serious. She laughed in the soft, low, sensual way Twi’leks did. “It’s protection.”

“From what?”

“It’s protection _for her_.” Suddenly, Ben understood what she meant by _protection_. He felt a flush heat his cheeks, compounding the burn. He understood her implication, and he felt like he’d been caught. He hadn’t even _done_ anything – well, anything but kiss Rey – and he already felt guilty. “Not for you. You’re a Senator’s son. There aren’t any consequences for you. But there are for her. Babies aren’t born on Jakku. Their mothers starve to death first.”

Ben almost crumpled the pill packet up in his hand. “I know how babies are made and how to stop them from being made.” His father had given him the talk – _that_ talk – at thirteen or so, on the Falcon. His mostly absentee father had done it, because Uncle Luke would have disapproved, citing the Jedi Code, and his mother would have been too embarrassed to broach the subject. Ben had walked around the halls of his uncle’s compound on Yavin 4 with his ears burning for _days_. “I’m not _stupid_.”

“No, but you are privileged.” The Twi’lek’s eyes flashed, and Ben couldn’t resist dipping into her mind, just behind her eyes. She’d seen too many children starving, over years of charitable missions. She’d seen plenty of girls reach sexual maturity and resort to prostitution, or be kidnapped by skin traders. She’d watched them beg her to take them with her when she left on the New Republic transport, and she’d had to say no. “You’ll go filling her head with silly ideas of how her life _could be_ , and then you’ll leave.” She breathed slowly through her flat, slitted nose. “You and her are not the same. You may think you are, because you’re young and she’s beautiful. But you aren’t. Don’t forget it.”

***

The public refresher on Jakku was flattering itself by calling itself a refresher. It wasn’t much more than a corrugated metal shack, with a huge tank abutting it, a poured concrete floor, and a rusty, overhead spigot. The water smelled recycled and metallic, but it was cool, and as it ran over his skin, Ben groaned in relief.

He wondered whether Rey had ventured back out to the Crackle to recover her treasures. He wasn’t sure whether she’d come back for portions today – from what she’d said, he’d gathered that the spoils behind the durasteel hunk were enough to feed her for a few weeks. She had no need of charity, now.

She had no need of _him_ , either, now that he’d moved that hunk of durasteel out of her way. For all she knew, he’d gotten lost in the sand storm. He looked at his feet and the sand swirling down the rusty drain, glumly.

“You’re sandburned.”

“And _naked_.” Ben yelped, turning around. Rey was watching him through the crack in the wooden door. He grabbed at the far-to-small towel hanging on the rusty durasteel hook, and it fell to the ground. He swore colorfully.

The door swung open and suddenly, Ben was totally, humiliatingly exposed. He froze in horror, and the girl took advantage of his paralysis to bend and snatch the towel, clutching it to her chest.

He groped out, awkwardly, to take the towel from her. Rey shook her head, silently, drew it closer to her chin, and took a step back, flattening her back against the wooden door. The look on her face could only be described as childlike curiosity. She cocked her head ever-so-slightly to the side as she looked down the length of his body, her brow creasing critically, like he was an alien species she’d never seen before. In some ways, he supposed, he was.

Ben hoped that sandburn disguised the flush that spread down his chest and neck – maybe it reached all the way to his toes. It took every ounce of the willpower he’d cultivated over the years to resist covering his groin with his hands. He wished he could cover his _whole body_ with his hands. He’d fantasized hundreds of times about seeing a girl naked, but he hadn’t anticipated that it would be cripplingly embarrassing to be _seen_ naked. He _knew_ he was all sharp elbows and gangly limbs and pasty skin and oddly placed freckles. Looking inside her head would only confirm what he already knew. He almost didn’t want to look, but the longer she studied him, the harder it was to resist.

When he ventured inside her mind, what he saw surprised him. Yes, he was battered and burned by the sand, even bruised in places. His skin was a ridiculous bright pink color where it had been exposed. But she thought he was _beautiful._ She thought the flat plane of his chest, peppered with odd marks, still lanky with youth, was beautiful. She thought his awkwardly long legs and his knobby knees were beautiful. Water was dripping down the line of muscles on his stomach, into the thatch of wiry dark hair between his thighs, and she thought that was beautiful, too. His half-hard cock was fascinating to her, something she could only sneak glances at, but couldn’t _stop_ sneaking glances at.

Being inside her head and knowing how enthralled she was made his member go wholly hard. It swelled, rose up, reached for his navel, and then angled towards her, the object of its affection, as if it had a mind of its own.

And then, she was horrified. He was still in her mind, but he would have known it just from the look on her face. He was horrified too, but for a different reason – he was horrified because _she_ was horrified. “What – why is it – ”

Ben snatched the towel and hid his erection, mortified. “You can’t just – just _ogle_ people like that.”

“Why not?” Rey looked genuinely confused, as if the concept of modesty was totally foreign to her. He wondered if she’d lived alone her whole life, and the thought made him inexplicably sad. “I’ve never seen – ”

“It’s rude.” Ben snapped. His embarrassment made him say something mean. “We don’t do that on _civilized_ planets.”

Rey flushed, then, embarrassed but she was quick to retort. “ _You_ do.”

Ben jumped to defend himself. He’d never seen her naked – it seemed a bit unfair, now. “I’ve never – ”

“You _imagined_ me without my clothes on.” Rey cut him off, hazel eyes narrowing. “Yesterday.”

Ben’s mortification flared, and then was momentarily forgotten. “How did you know that?”

Caught off guard, Rey blinked at him. “I don’t know.”

“Did you go in my head?” He hadn’t sensed it at all.

“I just wanted to try.” Rey sounded almost contrite. “It was only for a moment. I didn’t see very much.” She was trying to apologize, as if she was more ashamed of having invaded the privacy of his head than his naked body. “I want to learn how to use the Force.”

“What?”

She jutted her chin out. Her cheeks were as red as his were, and she wasn’t even sandburned. He got the sense she hated being proven wrong, or admitting she was wrong. “I want you to teach me.”

Ben sputtered, hopelessly. He remembered that he was naked, and wondered if this wasn’t the most bizarre conversation he’d ever had. “And you had to come tell me now?”

Rey looked up and down his body again. Her eyes finally flickered back to his face. She still looked curious, but her curiosity wasn’t exactly childlike anymore. Her voice changed in pitch. “I didn’t want to wait.”

“We definitely should wait.” Ben heard himself saying those words, in rote, remembering what the Twi’lek had told him that morning. But his world had centered in on her bottom lip. It had a little cut on it, from his teeth, and she was running her tongue over it. He wanted to kiss that spot again, and lick and soothe it with his tongue.

As if pulled by the force of her gravity, he tilted towards her. His forehead was slick against hers, still wet. A trickle of water ran down between her brows and along the side of her nose. Her lips felt very dry when he brushed the tip of his nose against them.

Her breath was very hot and close, but Rey didn’t kiss him. Biting the corner of her mouth, she tugged the towel out of his hands. He didn’t resist. She balled it in one fist, and wound her other hand into knot at her side, like she was bracing herself and summoning her courage.

Then, so quickly he barely registered what she was doing, she reached out with one finger, her index finger, and touched the calloused pad of it to the sensitive, swollen skin at very tip of his member. She lingered there, but so lightly that he only felt it after it was over.

Her face went bright red, and she yanked her hand away like she’d been burned. Ben realized he’d been holding his breath as she looked at him and touched him. It left his body in a whoosh, and his knees went wobbly.

Turning on her heel, Rey fled the refresher. For his part, Ben stayed there for a long time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> When you grow up on a desert planet without human interaction, you don't develop appropriate boundaries.


	6. Chapter 6

Rey knew she ought to be out in the starship graveyard, scrambling inside a star destroyer, or revisiting her secret place behind the durasteel hunk, to see if she’d missed anything. The philosopher of a scavenger was that there was always something new to find, even on well-trod paths.

Instead, she was staring intently at a pile of marbles and trying, to no avail, to move them.

She told herself that this would ultimately make her better at her work – stronger, cleverer, able to go places no one else could. It would help her protect herself, too.

That wasn’t really why she was making a fool of herself with these marbles, though. She’d succumbed to temptation. When Ben had told her she was different from the others, special, talented – she’d believed him. She wanted to be different. She wanted to be special.

Ben looked at her like she was different. His unblinking golden-brown eyes had unnerved her, at first, but now she saw herself reflected in them. Not a scavenger, or an orphan, or a nuisance, or a miracle who’d survived the sands alone. A woman, with aspirations and talents and words worth listening to. She’d started to crave his gaze. For all her insistence that she was nobody and nothing, she wanted to be something to somebody.

“Focus.” Ben was sitting across from her in the shade of her AT-AT, long legs crossed. “You’re thinking too much.”

“I’m supposed to be moving it with my mind, aren’t I?”

“Not your mind.” Ben’s brow furrowed. “The Force.”

“That’s awfully specific.” Rey couldn’t keep sarcasm from dripping from her words.

“You described it as good instincts.” He picked up a blue marble and lobbed it at her face. Without thinking, Rey lifted her hand, and it deflected sharply, driving straight into the sand as if it had been felled by a blaster bolt. She looked at her palm, stunned, and then at Ben. “See? You didn’t have time to think.”

“I don’t know how I did that.”

“You don’t need to know how.” Ben plucked the marble from the sand and set it on the ground with the rest of the set. He held out his broad palm, cupping it face-up, expectantly.

Rey tried her best not to think, but she couldn’t. She screwed her eyes shut, frustrated. The next best thing, she reasoned, was to think about something else. Her mind flitted through images, anxiously. Ben’s smile. Ben’s shirt sticking to his chest. Ben without his shirt, or any of his clothes, for that matter. His skin had been damp and bright red from the sandburn, but it had reminded her of a youngling’s skin – soft and unscarred. He wondered if he’d notice all of her scars, if he saw her without her clothes on.

 _That_ was _not_ helpful. That was distracting.

Rey gave her head a little shake, and then she thought, instead, about how she’d ducked the metal he’d thrown at her, even with her eyes closed. She’d seen the pieces of metal, in her mind’s eye, before they’d come hurtling her way.

She could see the marble rising into the air, now. She opened her eyes.

The blue marble floated, nervously, wobbling in the air as if it was off balance, into his waiting palm. Rey didn’t realize she’d been holding his breath until the marble was safely in his grip. He closed his hand around it, and his face split into the smile that made him look so boyish.

He didn’t put that marble back in the pile with the others. When she narrowed her gaze onto the second marble, a red one, he surreptitiously tucked it into his pocket.

He thought she didn’t see. She pretended she didn’t.

***

When the sun set, they sprawled out on the top of her AT-AT, looking at the stars and planets. Ben told her about his father, and his father’s ship – “junk, but fast junk” – and all the planets he’d been to. He pointed some of them out to her, his voice oddly wistful.

Rey wasn’t sure what he had to be wistful about – he’d _been_ to all of those places. She never would. But, at least for the next ten days, he was here on this sandy planet with her. She could talk to him, and hear about all those different planets and moons, and that was an adventure, in and of itself.

Tucking her crooked arm behind her head, Rey said, “Tell me about Endor.”

“It’s called the Forest Moon. It’s full of trees. They have red bark. The Ewoks – those are short, and fuzzy, and mostly peaceable – live in the trees. And there are high mountains, but not so high that there’s snow on them. And there are two suns, but you can’t see them, through the tree canopy. It’s beautiful.” He paused. “Do you want to see it?”

“What?”

Ben reached for her hand in the dark, and drew it over to his temple. Rey curled into her side and flattened her fingers against the side of his face. His skin was very warm, as if the sun still shone on it. “Look.”

Rey was about to tell him that she couldn’t, when she _did_. She realized the warmth at her fingertips wasn’t from his skin. It was from her fingertips, and it was branching out onto his skin, and beneath it.

Endor _was_ beautiful. She suddenly understood all the words he’d used to describe the moon in a way she hadn’t when he was speaking. Trees were tall and broad, like pillars. Everything was earthy brown or green, and she couldn’t see farther than ten meters for all the trees. The ground sloped and rose, much higher than sand dunes, and where it dipped down, there were wide, glassy lakes. She saw his memory of stout, furred creatures, speaking in chirping, agitated voices. She saw a woman, a human woman, who towered over the Ewoks. She looked like a giant, but a gentle one, with brown eyes and a kind smile.

“I’d like to take you there.” His voice broke her reverie. Rey felt as if she’d opened her eyes to Jakku as she left his mind, reluctantly. It was so much more beautiful in there than where she physically was.

She didn’t tell him that she’d never leave Jakku, even with him. She didn’t tell him she was waiting, waiting for a family that seemed less and less likely to ever come back every time she counted a year on her scratch-marked wall.

“You already did.” She told him, instead, not moving her hand from his face. She didn’t need it to look into his head, now, but she liked the softness of his hair as it fell over her fingers. She fingered the cropped ends of it, where it brushed the tops of his protruding ears.

Ben exhaled, slowly, and looked up at the stars. When she strained, she could just make out his profile in the dark. “Where would you go, if you could go anywhere?”

“Endor.” Rey teased. Ben laughed. “I don’t know. Where should I go?”

“Somewhere with me.” He turned his face into her hand. “Anywhere with me.”

Rey couldn’t see any part of his face, from this angle, but she could imagine it. She imagined he was giving her _that_ look, the one that was so unfamiliar to her, an orphan and a loner.

She kissed him, clumsy in the darkness, her hand groping for the collar of his shirt to pull him near. He made a noise of surprise into her mouth, and she remembered that he couldn’t see her, either. His lips were chapped, still, from the sand, and now she felt like they matched hers. They weren’t any softer than hers were.

Rey remembered his nubby, warm tongue in her mouth in the ruins of the starship. It had felt indecent and exciting to taste it. She pressed her tongue into his mouth, and instead of meeting the barrier of his teeth, or lips, or the roof of his mouth, found his slick tongue. It fought with hers for dominance, but in a pleasant way.

Ben slid across the metal of the AT-AT, and it groaned under his weight as he settled half his body on top of her. One of his legs was so wide that she had to spread her legs to let it rest between them, and the arm across her stomach was heavy as a vise. Their combined weights dented the roof of the old machine, and Rey would have worried about falling through, about rust, if he hadn’t kept kissing her.

His hand spanned her stomach entirely, she thought, idly, as he splayed out his fingers on her belly. It filled the concave place between her hip-bones and the bottom of her ribcage. She felt it rise and fall as she breathed.

Creeping upwards, Ben’s hand traced the _V_ formed by the two overlapping layers of the sheer, lightweight wrap she wore. A finger wedged into the overlap, and spread the two pieces apart, and then his palm settled between them, onto her sternum. She could feel her heart pitter-patter against his hand, rapidly, through her tunic.

His hand moved to one side, then, to the side where her heartbeat came from, and his three smallest fingers brushed the outside of her breast. His thumb traced the flat skin on the other side of it, and slowly, very slowly, his palm settled onto the mound of it.

“Wait.”

“I’m sorry.” Ben blurted out, sounding like a boy, and not man again. He took his hand out of the outer wrap like he’d been scalded.

“No, don’t say you’re sorry. Just _wait_.” Rey sat up straight, fumbling for her utilitarian brown belt. She heard it slide down the side of the AT-AT and land with a _thunk_ in the sand, and heard him suck in a breath. Without her belt, the gauzy wrap of fabric around her shoulders fell around her hips.  Folding her arms across herself, Rey grasped the hem of her tunic and pulled it up, over her head.

It felt strange to be half-naked outside. She felt free, and reckless, naked out in the open like this. She stretched her hands out above her head, letting the cool night air kiss her nipples.

When she laid back on the slope of the AT-AT roof, _he_ kissed her nipples. One hand settled over one breast, covering it as if to preserve her modesty, or keep her warm. The other breast was plenty warm, even _hot_ , under his open mouth. He left wet trails on her skin, moving in concentric circles until he settled onto the point of her breast and _sucked._

“ _Oh_.”

“Is –” He sounded nervous, when he took his mouth off her nipple and spoke.

“Don’t stop.” Rey wound a hand into his hand and pushed him back where he’d been. It felt like his mouth was attached to a string inside her body, one that wound from her breasts, through her belly, to the apex of her thighs. With every wet tug of his mouth, he tugged the string, and the length of it quivered.  

Somehow, his thigh worked its way higher in between her legs, edging up from her knees, to her groin. She clenched her legs around it, instinctively, and a groan rumbled into her chest from his. The band of muscle atop his leg moved against her, and in the dark, her eyes widened. The place where the imaginary string she’d felt ended _throbbed._

On the other side of her leg, prodding bruisingly against her hip, was something even harder than the muscle on the top of his thigh. It was twitching, and hot, even through her pants and his. Rey thought she knew what it was – the appendage between his legs that had so alarmed and fascinated her in the ‘fresher – but she hadn’t realized, from her brief, feather-light touch, that it could get so _hard_. She reached for it, fingers clawing curiously in the dark, when he intercepted her hand and locked it in his fist.

“I have curfew.” Ben mumbled the words against her neck. He sounded tortured, as if whatever she was doing, even if was just lying there, was hurting him terribly. His breath was moist and warm on her skin.

Rey blinked at the stars. Surely, this – whatever they were doing – couldn’t just stop. Surely they were on a trajectory towards something – rutting, like animals did, or fucking, like prostitutes did.

But in her silence, Ben detangled himself her and slid on his belly down the side of the AT-AT. She heard him shuffling around in the sand, waiting for her to say something.

“Ben.”

“Yes?” She felt, rather than saw, him look up at her in the dark.

“I’d like to learn more, tomorrow.”

“About the Force?” He was smiling; she knew it. She understood the dual meaning of his words. It felt like they had a secret, one they could only talk about it code words. She didn’t feel ashamed of what they’d been doing – it was a good kind of secret.

“About both.” Rey slid down the AT-AT, and somehow, even without seeing her, he caught her. She slid slowly down his chest and abdomen, her naked belly scraping against the hardness she’d felt against her hip on the top of the AT-AT. When he set her on her feet, she felt it still, above her navel.

“Did I do that?”

“Do what?”

Rey rubbed her stomach against the prodding thing, and he made a choked noise. “Kriff – _yes_.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be.” He found her mouth in the dark, and kissed her again. “Do you need help finding your clothes?”

Rey looked at the inky sand around her ankles. “I’ll find them when it’s light out. I can sleep without them.”

Ben pressed another, urgent kiss to her lips, one that made her think he didn’t really want to leave, even as he drew out of her arms. “I’ll think about _that_  all night.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ah, young love. I remember it fondly, except the whole curfew part.


	7. Chapter 7

Ben didn’t handle tears well. He’d cried infrequently as a child, more prone to fits and silent, sullen anger. When one of his young charges started sobbing, for no apparent reason, he tried to ignore it. The youngling followed him around, wailing, sucking its thumb and dragging a flimsy by one page.

His supervisor narrowed her eyes at him as if to say, _see?_ He scowled at her and thought, self-consciously – although he knew she couldn’t read his thoughts, she had not an ounce of Force sensitivity – of the packet of pink pills in his bunk. He’d almost tucked them into his pocket the day before, as he’d left the transport to find Rey out at the Crackle, and had been too embarrassed. Why he’d been embarrassed, he didn’t know.

He and Rey would meet after his community service was done for the day and he would use the precious few daylit hours to teach her, or to follow her around like a puppy as she worked, occasionally trying to impress her, or just distract her. Then, the sun would fall, and they’d use the even fewer dark hours before curfew to kiss and touch each other.

That was all, though – kissing and touching. If he brought the packet of pills with him, she might think he wanted more. Which, of course, he _did_ , but he was too nervous to do anything about it. In any case, even if he did eventually work up the courage, abruptly producing contraceptives didn’t seem like an especially tactful way to proposition her.

The youngling – a humanoid – tugged his sleeve, pathetically.

“All right, come here.” Ben sat cross-legged on the ground and boosted the youngling into his lap. “A is for Aiwha. B is for Bantha.” He started to realize he was in over his head when he tried to think of an animal starting with _C._

_You’re good at this._

Ben jumped, jostling the youngling. He looked around, stunned. It was Rey’s voice in his head, curling around his ear and lilting with humor, but the only voice he’d ever heard there was his mother’s. He’d been too isolated from his fellow students to ever communicate with them in that most intimate way, and he’d _purposefully_ shut his uncle out. He got enough of his platitudes verbally.

 _I didn’t teach you that._ He spotted her, over in the rations line. She’d dragged her sled full of pieces of junk – he was careful not to call it that in front of her, now – over from her speeder and was standing watchfully over it.

He’d shown her things in his head, eager to show her the world, at least what he knew of it, and he’d spoken in her ear.

He hadn’t been aware she could speak back.

 _I figured it out on my own._ She sounded terribly pleased with herself. _Last night._

Ben cocked his head at her in a question, still listing animals out-loud. He _felt_ her focus, and saw her forehead wrinkle with the effort of it. She couldn’t quite project her memories to him the way he could to her, but he got the gist of what she was trying to show him.

He felt his face heat up, and he abruptly pushed the youngling off his lap.

Last night, they’d been pressed up against the side of her AT-AT. His hands had wandered beneath her belt for the first time, finding handfuls of her backside. He’d pressed his erection into the warm space between her legs, and jerked her hips forwards with his hands, simulating what he really wanted. It had been a cheap imitation of the real thing, but after a few dry thrusts, the pressure in the pit of his belly had unwound with a _snap_. He’d come in his pants with a surprised grunt, semen seeping through the fabric and down his thigh.

Rey had seemed oblivious to his predicament. He’d steadied her rotating hips with his hands, too sensitive to let her keep chafing his trousers over his still-twitching cock. The dark had hidden his face, and the shame of coming so fast and from so little. He wondered if she could feel the wetness of it, and if she knew what it was. He'd wanted to tell her: _I want to be inside you the next time I do that._ The words had been on the tip of his tongue.

 _You didn’t mean for me to hear that?_ Rey’s voice tickled in his ear. She sounded unsure of herself.

 _No._ He most certainly had _not_. He hadn’t been aware she could look into his head without his inviting her in.

 _I’m sorry._ Rey toed the sand. _Are you embarrassed?_

 _Yes._ She grinned at that; he should have known she would. Nothing seemed to embarrass her, except perhaps his implication that she ought to be embarrassed.

***

The younglings were sent on their way at mid-day. On Hosnian Prime, or any other world Ben had been on, they would have been handed over to their parents. Here, they disappeared into the sand from whence they’d come.

Ben found Rey in the broad, low tent at Niima Outpost, dipping her treasures under a rusty spigot and scrubbing them fiercely. He sat down next to her, silently, and picked up a rag. “How many portions is this good for?”

“Two, if I’m lucky.”

Ben considered telling her she didn’t _need_ luck, because she had the Force, and now she could use it to get into people’s heads, but he didn’t. His ears were still red from that revelation. “Don’t you get sick of them?”

Rey gave him an odd look. “Portions? When food is scarce, you don’t get sick of it.”

“I mean don’t you get sick of eating the same thing, every day?” She blinked at him, endearingly confused, and it occurred to him that she’d eaten sand-dry, bland, dehydrated packets of food – if it could be called that – her whole life. He wanted to introduce her to flatbread, and steak, and soft-poached eggs. Fruit and crunchy seeds and spicy jerked meat.

Jakku didn’t have much in the way of food.

“What else is there to eat?” He felt her probe at his temples with her mind, this time. She was tentative, contrite for having invaded his thoughts and embarrassed him. She wanted to see food in there the way she’d seen Endor. His memories wouldn’t fill her belly, the way real food would, though. He blocked her out, pleased that he could still do that.

“Can I show you?”

***

Ben rooted around in the storage locker of the transport’s galley for something that resembled _real_ food. Most of the ready-made and heated meals the community service detainees were fed didn’t fit that description, but he spotted nerf steak meat in gravy, with mashed root vegetables, and decided that would do. He stripped the plastic off the container,  put it into the microwave, and heated it up. The faint whirring noise of the machine filled the narrow, industrial galley, and soon, so did the smell of warming meat.

Rey’s nostrils flared, but she looked almost suspicious when Ben set the hot, plastic, disposable dish in front of her. “What is it?”

“It’s food.”

“It doesn’t look like food.”

“What _you_ eat doesn’t look like food.” She gave him a mistrustful look reached for the mashed vegetables with her bare hand. Ben jumped, imagining his mother’s face. “Not – not with…” He fumbled for a utensil in a drawer, but when he found one, it was too late. Rey had smeared some gravy and mash on her fingers, and put them in her mouth.

He should have called her uncivilized for eating off her hands, or at least handed her the utensil and hoped she got the hint. He didn’t. He clenched the metal utensil in his fist, swallowing hard.

Rey sucked her index and middle finger clean, and they left her mouth with an indecent pop, and then she was scooping up more food, greedily. Some sauce got on her chin, and her tongue darted out to catch it. She was a bit of a sloppy eater, and the food was wet. As she put it in her mouth, she made messy little slurping noises, thrusting her fingers between her lips and closing her eyes in absolute bliss.

Watching her eat, he could suddenly envision her sucking on his cock. Fellatio wasn’t something he anticipated he’d ever be lucky enough to experience, let alone something he’d ever ask – _beg_ – for. Watching her lick her fingers had him on the verge of begging.

Ben pressed his crotch into the metal counter spanning the length of the galley. The metal felt cold and constrictive, and he needed that. He finally managed to croak, “Good?”

“It’s _so_ good.” Rey licked errant trickles of gravy off the side of her hand, and something in his lower belly twitched, in appreciation. She must have caught the look on his face, because she suddenly lowered her hand. “Were you hungry?” She looked guilty for having finished it all; she’d misunderstood the look on his face.

“Yes.” Ben knew he should be gentle, or at least gentlemanly, but if he didn’t move quickly, he thought he might lose his nerve. He grabbed her wrist between two fingers. She’d downed the last handful of stew and vegetables, but her fingers were still sticky. He drew them – all of them at once –  into his mouth and sucked them clean. His teeth scraped her skin.

Rey looked confused, and Ben realized she didn’t understand the implication, just as she hadn’t understood how suggestive her manner of eating had been. She cocked her head at him.

Ben brought her hand to his chest. She flattened it out, covering a comically small portion of his torso, and gamely let him tug it towards his navel. Her mouth rounded in recognition as he pulled he knuckles lower than his navel. He watched her fingers fumble the fastenings and buttons at the top of his pants, her brow furrowed in utmost concentration. When she’d unfastened them, his member poked out from between the flaps of fabric, an angry red color already.

Just like she had in the public ‘fresher, Rey pressed a finger to the tip of him. This time, it was her thumb. It dammed up the clear fluid weeping from the head of his cock for a moment, and then she brought her hand to her mouth, and licked the pad of her thumb. “It tastes like salt tablets.”

In his state of delirious arousal, it took Ben a moment to react. He blinked at her, confused by the turn this encounter was taking. “What?”

“Salt tablets.” Rey traced the leaking slit at the tip again, this time with her middle finger. “You take them to try and retain water in the heat, so you don’t die of thirst.” She sounded utterly matter-of-fact about this, and she was equally matter of fact as she ran her knuckles along the very slight curve of his shaft, into the nest of curls at the root of his member. The feather-light touch almost felt like a tickle. It was _almost_ unbearable.

It was easier to let her into his head then it was to tell her what he wanted. If she could see his filthiest, most private thoughts, then so be it. He pressed his forehead to hers and felt her mind nudge his, endlessly curious. He let her see how he touched himself: tight grip, thumb on the top, fingers along the bottom, little twist right under the ridge of the head.

She put her fingers back at the seam of his lips, and he sucked them in, embarrassingly eager. When her fingers were good and wet, she reached back down. Her spit-slicked hand slid along the length of his stiffness, and she mimicked what he’d shown her. Not quite perfectly, but he couldn’t complain. He should be _thanking_ her. He should be –

He should be touching her, too.

Ben fumbled for the drawstring of her trousers and then hunched over her, reaching into the back of them and over the smooth rump of her bottom. He’d always hated his long limbs and unwieldy hands, but suddenly, he was grateful for them. He could reach the place where her legs met her backside, and crook two fingers into the soft, wet crease there. She arched into him as he slid his fingers into those mysterious, wet folds, and her abdomen pressed against the base of his member.

Suddenly, as good as her little hand felt, and as much as he wanted to feel her mouth, _this_ was what he wanted wrapped around his cock. He hunted for the wet cavity he knew was down there _somewhere_ , somewhere in the slippery layers of flesh.

“What are you doing?” He felt her lips against his collarbone as she spoke. She sounded almost bemused.

“I’m trying to find – ” Ben huffed out an obscenity when she tightened her grip.

“It’s not _there_.” She sounded almost exasperated. She kept tugging his cock with one hand, and wrapped the other around the nape of his neck, drawing his forehead down to touch hers. She let him see inside.

She’d touched herself, the night before. It had been the first time. There had been significant trial and error involved, but she’d found a spot, near where his knee always rubbed when they kissed and he got on top of her. It was a raised little nub on the front of her body, in between all the folds, and it twitched when she rubbed it side to side, her fingertip not on it, but next to it.

Ben choked out a moan. “Kriff, I –”

Normally there was some warning – tightness and tingling in his testicles, heat creeping up the base of his spine. There was no warning, this time. He went rigid and his hips jerked against hers as he ejaculated, splattering her tunic and the back of her hand.

He kept swearing long after the pleasure of orgasm melted away into intense guilt. He slid his hands out of her pants, reluctantly, and wrapped them around her waist, resting his forehead on her shoulder.

“Are you… finished?” Rey sounded unsure.

Ben lifted his head. “We don’t have to be finished. We can go to my bunk.”

“I don’t want to get you in trouble.”

“I _want_ to get in trouble.” Ben insisted. “Maybe I’ll get more community service.” Rey laughed, cheeks pinking in a way they so rarely did. “Then I won’t have to leave you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I really, really hate perfect, porn-style sex. It never advances the plot and it hardly ever feels in-character. With that said, poor Rey will not be left hanging forever. Practice makes perfect, with some dry humping and premature ejaculation along the way. Have patience. 
> 
> P.S. All of you are like "this is so sweet and fluffy!" and I'm just over here weeping and hoping you'll forgive me when I break these kid's hearts.


	8. Chapter 8

Rey had never seen a sonic washer before. She stripped her clothes off without hesitation in the bunk galley – not that she really minded the smell of him on her, but she couldn’t resist the thought of having her sun-bleached rags clean – and threw them into the cylindrical tube. It started to purr and shake, hypnotically.

Ben looked at her as if he was trying not to smile.

“What?”

“You’re naked.” There was tinge of excitement in his plaintive words.

“How else am I supposed to wash my clothes?” Rey had little concept of modesty, but suddenly, she felt exposed, standing there in just her boots– not because she was naked, necessarily, but because of the way his eyes moved down the length of her. It occurred to her that even if he’d had his hands all over her body, he’d had his hands all over her body in the _dark_. He’d never seen the scars that crisscrossed her forearms, or the deep, dark purple line on her shin, or the half-moon on her shoulder, or the jagged white lines near her armpit. She had no reason to feel self-conscious about her small breasts and narrow hips – she had nothing to compare herself to, really – but the scars, she was self-conscious about. “Give me your shirt.”

“I have a better idea.” Ben picked her up with a little grunt, and she had the strangest recollection of being a child in her parent’s arms, very small and secure. She wasn’t sure if it was a memory, or wishful thinking. She wrapped her arms around his neck, instinctively, even though she knew he wouldn’t drop her.

Carrying her over to the highest bunk on the left side of the bay, Ben tipped her out of her arms, and into it. When he clambered up, a moment later, he had nowhere to go but on top of her.

“Ben.” Rey laughing, trying to roll out from under him. She was met with the durasteel of the berth. The bunk was too narrow for two bodies to lay side by side. “We can’t fit.”

Bracing himself on his arms over her, Ben pressed her pelvis into the mattress with his hips, working them side to side until she was forced to separate her thighs to make way for him. He felt heavy and hard again against the inside of her leg, but he gave her a boyish, almost shy smile. “I think we could fit.”

Rey blinked hazily up at him, realizing what he meant. She’d always been good with her hands, good at tinkering with things and making them work together. She knew where the hollow in her body was, the one that bled irregularly and needed to be protected from lecherous men and creatures at all costs. Recently, she’d become acquainted with the strange, swelling appendage in between Ben’s legs. Now, she could understand how their bodies could fit together, like gears, and she knew on an intellectual level, that they should. It was the primal, natural thing to do. “Oh.”

“Oh?” He repeated, hopefully.

She’d wondered whether he’d noticed her scars. She got her answer. He slowly kissed his way down her body, starting at her lips and stopping at each scar to examine it and then pressing his lips to it gently. The first was the nick on her neck, from a piece of hot shrapnel.

“What’s this from?”

It was the crisscross on her left forearm. “My arm got caught in a rope, when I was climbing out in the graveyard.”

He hummed against her skin, and then moved to the jagged scars near her armpit – ones from the tip of a spear. “This one?”

“A Teedo.” She said, simply. He raised his brows. “I gave him more scars than he gave me.”

Ben chuckled against her skin, punctuated the scars with another kiss, and then moved across her body. He was momentarily distracted by her breasts, but then he found the half-moon above them, just under her clavicle.

“This one?” He kissed the tiny, semi-circular burn.  

“Plutt put his t’bac out on me, when I was little. It burned right through my clothes.”

Ben paused, lifting his lips off the little scar. There was something very dangerous in his eyes. She’d only survived on Jakku because she had a sense for danger. She knew it by the prickle on her neck. Her neck prickled now. His voice dropped an octave. “What?”

“It’s just a little burn.” She told him, unnerved by his reaction.

“Where were your parents?” He sounded accusing, but she knew that wasn’t directed at _her_.

“They were…” Rey wanted to defend them, but the words stuck in her throat. “Already gone. Unkar made sure I didn’t starve until I could fend for myself.”

His voice softened, and she could tell, then, that he felt badly. “When did they die?”

“They’re not dead.” Rey snapped, color rising to her cheeks. “They’ll be back. One day.” The look on his face said he didn’t believe her, and that he pitied her. For a split second, she hated him. She stared at the ceiling, avoiding his gaze.

He’d voiced her second-worst fear: that her parents were dead. It was second only to the fear that they were alive and hadn’t come back for her because they didn’t _care_ about her. She’d rather they be dead than believe that.

She half-hoped he’d keep kissing down her body, and see the rest of her scars, and hear the sad stories behind each of them. His mouth was soft and pleasant and infinitely better than thinking about her upbringing, or lack thereof.

Instead, he seemed to fixate on this one scar in particular, and on Unkar Plutt. He traced the half-moon with his fingertip. “When did you go to live alone out in desert?”

“When I started bleeding.” Rey told him, bluntly.

“Why?”

She frowned at him. It was a truth universal on Jakku – and, she assumed, the galaxy – that bleeding made you a woman, and being a woman made you a target. “You know why.”

Ben did know. She could sense his unease, right at the front of his consciousness. He settled on his elbow, studying her. “Are you a virgin?”

“Yes.” Rey felt a prickle of annoyance. She’d always been able to protect herself, out in the desert, and under Unkar’s watchful, lecherous gaze. She resented the implication that she hadn’t been able to.

“You don’t seem… embarrassed.” Ben sounded almost disgruntled.

“What is there to be embarrassed about?” Rey pushed his hair out of his face, tracing the edge of his ear. “Are _you_ embarrassed?”

“I’m…” He ducked his head down onto her breastbone, exhaling in a hot puff onto it. “Nervous.” He lifted his head. “You didn’t ask if _I_ was a virgin.” He must have seen her trying to hide a smile, because he asked, ruefully, “Is it that obvious?”

“Yes.” Rey admitted. His ears were aflame and he looked miserable with embarrassment, so she tugged on them, tugged him back up to her to kiss him.

When he pulled away, he looked solemn, rather than embarrassed, even if his ears were still pink. “If we make love – ”

“Oh, is that what they call it on civilized planets?” Rey teased. Privately, she decided she liked his word for it better. It seemed more appropriate. Rutting or fucking was something skin girls or prostitutes or occasionally scavengers out in the dust did. He was different – cleaner, more innocent. When she was with him, she felt that way, too.  

He grinned down at her, self-consciously. “What do you call it on Jakku?”

“You don’t want to know.” Rey stroked the side of his face catching his lips on her outstretched fingers. He covered her hand with his, rubbing his thumb across the back of it.

“You’d be my first, and my last.” It was part-confession, part-promise.

“Why?”

He paused, thoughtfully, and then recited something. “There is no passion, there is serenity.” He cleared his throat, and then elaborated, “Attachments – personal attachments – are forbidden to the Jedi.”

Rey looked up at him, bewildered. He’d told her about Yavin 4, and his uncle, and how _he’d_ learned to tap into the energy that tingled inside both of them. She knew he would join the Order, soon, but what exactly that entailed was somewhat mysterious to her.  “Why would you want to be a Jedi, then?”

Ben looked inexplicably sad. He faltered for a second, and the bump on his throat bobbed endearingly. His eyes were curiously wet. After a long moment, he sunk down onto the mattress and settled his body over her, exhaling across her shoulder. “I don’t think I do.”

Rey didn’t press for more. She stroked the crown of his head, wrapped her arms around his back and hoped his weight would crush her. Maybe it would release the painful bubble of pressure in her chest.

***

Ben tried to sneak her out of the transport just before the afternoon shift ended, gripping her hand and tugging her through the hatch and down the gangplank.

“Solo.” A beautiful blue Twi’lek – almost as tall as Ben, with an imperious, imposing stare – materialized behind them. Rey recognized her. She was one of the New Republic citizens who handed out rations every year, and whose eyes she tried to avoid. “We’re on-world for two more days.” Rey felt her stomach constrict. _Two days._ “We only have enough rations on board for the crew and probationers.”

So the Twi’lek had found evidence of the bizarre and wonderful food he’d given her.

“I’m not hungry.” Ben kept his voice admirably level. His fingers flexed around Rey’s, and suddenly she realized he was still holding her had. She had a mad desire to pull away, not to touch him in front of the supervisor, but his fingers were clamped around hers like iron, as if he was afraid she’d be taken away from him by force. “I don’t need my ration tonight.”

 “You shouldn’t share your rations with the civilians.” The Twi’lek’s reptilian gaze flickered between the two of them. Rey wasn’t sure who she was addressing when she said, “Then when all they have are portions, they know what they’re missing.”

It was too late to help that, Rey realized. It wasn’t the real food she would miss – that, she could live without. She could fantasize about it when her belly was empty, or when her portions had been mixed with sand, and the fantasy would be good enough.

She wasn’t sure if remembering Ben would be good enough.

***

The next day – the day before Ben’s transport was due off-world, Rey noted, dully – they didn’t go out to the starship graveyard or the shade of her AT-AT for privacy. They usually sought privacy, ostensibly so they wouldn’t draw attention to her nascent abilities. It was also so they could be alone.

Today, on the last day, though, Ben insisted they go to Niima Outpost.

“I want you to try something.” He looked very serious. “And you can’t practice it on me first.”

Rey wrinkled her brow at him. “Why not?”

Ben favored her with a cocksure grin, the kind that made her heartbeat stutter. “Because I’m too strong in the Force.”

Rey rolled her eyes. “If you say so, Jedi.”

“How much is that worth?” He gestured to the knapsack of bits and bobs she’d found that morning.

“Three or four portions.”

“How much will Plutt give you for it?” He spat out the name in a way that made her tense up.

“Two.” She admitted.

“I want you to insist on ten.”  

“Ten?” Rey scoffed. “He’ll spit in my face.”

“No, he’ll listen to you.” Ben crossed his arms over his chest. “Don’t ask him. Tell him. If you go into my head, you can go into his.”

Rey shuddered, impulsively. “I don’t want to go into his head.”

Ben’s eyes darkened. “I won’t look. I’d have to kill him.”

Rey thought he was joking. She was _almost_ sure he was.

***

“Two.” Predictable.

“Ten.”

The Crolute barked out a laugh. “You’ll have to give me a lot more than vibro-shears and an inciter for ten portions.” His leer left no doubt as to what he considered a fair trade, and Rey felt, rather than saw, Ben’s rage. It was hot and black, rolling off of him like waves. It baffled Rey that Plutt couldn’t feel it.

To his credit, Ben didn’t react physically. He remained at his vantage point, across the hub of the tent, half-behind a heavy pole.

 _Focus._ Ben’s voice tickled in her head, tightly controlled. _Visualize him agreeing. Visualize him saying the words._ “You _will_ give me ten portions.”

And he _did._ His eyes glazed for a moment, and he nodded, stupidly, his double-chin bobbing. “I… I will give you ten portions.”

***

Euphoric, Rey all but floated out of Plutt’s hub. She felt _powerful_ , after a lifetime of feeling powerless. She met Ben outside, and beamed at him, showing him the two handfuls of portions. “Ten.”

She’d become accustomed to the flash of pride in Ben’s eyes whenever she mastered something. She relished his surprise and pleasure when she caught on to something faster than he expected.

His expression surprised her, then. He looked very serious. “Listen to me. Promise you will never go hungry again.”

“I don’t know.” Rey faltered, suddenly feeling a twinge of guilt. “I’m not going to trick him every time, just when he’s trying to cheat me.”

“Promise me.” If she didn’t know better, she'd think he was using the same trick on her that she’d used on Unkar, compelling her to make promises she couldn’t keep. “And promise me he won’t touch you.”

His eyes were very dark again, almost unrecognizable in the face she’d studied so intently for the past ten days. They bore into her with an intensity she’d never known, and now she was sure he was compelling her – not with the Force, but with the strength of his will. “I promise.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Breathe, people. The pain train ain't at the station yet.
> 
> P.S. I may be slightly slower than usual publishing the next chapter, because what happens in that chapter only happens once, and I feel like I need to get it exactly right. If that doesn't pique your interest, I don't know what will. 
> 
> P.P.S. Kylo is that you?


	9. Chapter 9

In the dusk, they walked from Niima back to the AT-AT, side by side but not touching. Ben would’ve liked to hold Rey’s hand, but she had her arms folded tightly across her chest. Her jaw was set resolutely, and when he pressed against her mind, he heard her stiff, agonized mantra. _Don’t cry. Don’t cry._

“Don’t do that.” Rey looked straight ahead. “That’s private.”

Ben put his hands in his pockets to stop himself from touching her.

***

They stood outside the port of her AT-AT for a long time, on opposite sides of it.

“So, Jedi.” Rey sounded like she was making a great effort to be nonchalant He didn’t need to look into her mind to know she was the farthest thing from nonchalant. Her breath was short, and she was bracing herself, knees locked, as if that would strengthen her resolve. “Goodbye.”

“I’m not a Jedi yet.” Ben’s voice cracked. He stepped closer to her, his heartbeat thrumming under his sternum. She tilted her chin up to look at him, her jaw trembling. He got the sense she was daring him to do or say _something,_ that she needed him to make the first parry. That stirred his courage, and he told her, meaningfully, in a lower voice, “There’s something I wanted to do, first.”

Understanding flickered across her face, and she reached for his hand.

The AT-AT was Rey’s inner sanctum, her sanctuary and fortress. Ben knew that. For that reason, he’d never ducked inside of it – that, and he was quite sure he was too tall to fit in it. But now, Rey pulled him into it, backing her way into the tight space and holding his wrist in both her hands.

It was somehow even blacker inside then it was in the desert at night, and Ben narrowly missed bumping his head. He bent double, awkwardly, and was suddenly, painfully aware of how much he didn’t fit in her world, both metaphorically and physically. Still, Rey pulled him in.

She left him alone in the dark, for a moment. He froze, afraid that if he’d moved he’d run into something, or accidentally straighten up and concuss himself. For her part, Rey seemed to know exactly where everything was. He heard rustling, the shifting of her weight on the metal floor, and then soft, sure footsteps sidestepping things.

A flickering, weak gas lamp sputtered to life, and in its glow, he observed, “You’re naked again.”

A ghost of a smile crossed her face. “I think we ought to be naked for this.” She looked him over from head to toe, from his boots to his collared shirt, biting her lower lip. “Both of us.”

Ben scrambled to do her bidding. He kicked off his boots and yanked off his shirt, smacking his arms against the top of the AT-AT as he pulled it over his head. He tossed it over his shoulder. It didn’t have far to go in the cramped hovel. He unfastened his pants and pushed them to his ankles, and then straightened up, at least as much as he was able to.

His cock jutted out in front of him, bobbing ever so slightly as he shifted his weight, and she stared at it intently. In this, at least, he was confident. He knew he was well-endowed, but, more importantly, she’d seen it, touched it, and by all accounts, liked it well enough. He let her look, wondering if she was reassessing it now that she knew where they were going to try to make it fit.

Rey’s eyes glowed in lamplight. He watched her throat bob in the first hint of nervousness. “And I think we should be lying down.”

Ben looked around his feet. There was a laughably narrow and rickety hammock – she’d have no luck getting him into _that_ , even with the promise of sex – and a not much else. “Ah… where?”

They spread out a blanket on the ground – a scratchy, rough thing that looked suspiciously stained – and knelt on it, facing each other. Ben had a brief moment of regret when he felt the coarse fabric scrape his bare knees. He should have her virginity – he didn’t much care where he lost _his_ –  in a bed, a soft bed, with clean sheets. It just seemed like the right thing to do.

Rey reached out and traced a pattern onto his chest, and his guilt evaporated. The floor would be fine. The floor would be perfect.

He wrapped his hands around her head and pulled her into a kiss, tugging her hair out of its buns. She scooted closer on her knees as she pushed her tongue into his mouth, until his erection pressed into the notch at the bottom of her ribcage.

“I wanted to fall in love.” Ben mumbled against her mouth, spreading his fingers out in her hair and digging them lightly into the back of her skull.

“What?” She murmured the syllable against his neck.

“That’s what I wanted to do.” All of the sudden, he was nervous again. His breath stuttered into her ear. “Before – ”

Rey pushed him back onto the blanket with a surprising amount of strength, and kissed him just as forcefully. Her hands were frantic with desperation as they moved over his chest, up his neck, and into his hair.

“Let’s make love.” She looked down at him, her chest rising and falling rapidly, and added, by way of explanation, almost bashfully, “I like your words for it.”

She’d thrown her leg over him, straddling his waist, pressing her warm, wet sex into his hip, and suddenly, he wasn’t nervous at _all_. Wrapping his arms around her, Ben tipped her over onto her back and smothered her clavicle in kisses, fumbling a hand down between their bellies to find his erection.

Finding his way inside her was harder. Ben rested his forehead on her shoulder and looked down, cursing, as his head slipped from one end of her slit to the other. He tried again, and managed nothing more than to grind against her ineffectually. He growled with impatience, shoulders shaking.

Rey’s hand rubbed over his shoulders, soothingly, and then snaked down to wrap around his cock and put it in place. He felt the head of it nudge against a shallow, slippery dip.

“There?” He whispered, doubtfully. Surely not. It wouldn’t fit.

“Yes.” Rey nodded, affirmatively, mouth hanging half open. She looked into his eyes with utter trust as he pushed forward, bracing himself on his arms, and somehow, that trust made what happened next even worse.

When he’d barely breached her, just a few inches of his cock painstakingly pressed into tight, wet heat, Rey made a soft, wounded noise, as if he’d betrayed her. In some way, he thought he had. He hadn’t realized this would hurt her. He froze, torn between the exquisite agony of being inside her, and the true agony of hurting her.

He started to pull out, and she shook her head, face screwed up in pain. She locked her legs around the backs of his thighs, but she didn’t open her eyes.

Ben hissed out an obscenity, swearing more at himself than at her, and tilted his hips back and forth a few times, experimentally, not making much headway. The shallow, soft thrusts eased his passage, and when he pressed forward again in earnest, he unexpectedly slid all the way in and bottomed out, his groin touching hers.

He couldn’t help but look down to see what it looked like. Rey’s lower belly was trembling and contracting with pain and panic. He rested his hand on it, trying to soothe her, and suddenly felt lightheaded. Through the thin layer of her muscles and skin, and absent any body fat, he could feel his own cock nestled inside. It was an out-of-body moment – he felt what it was like to be in her, and he felt himself in her.

Ben kept his hand on her abdomen as he started to move, bracing himself with his other arm. Rey’s fingers fluttered to the straining muscles on that arm, and she dug her fingernails into them, keeping her eyes closed. The pain felt surprisingly like pleasure. He could feel himself sliding in and out under his own fingers, and feel her body making way for him. It got easier every time, and her fingers gradually loosened on his arm, but not before they’d cut grooves into it.

“Can you open your eyes?” His voice was strangled. Rey did, and they were wet. “Am I still hurting you?”

“No.” She shook her head for emphasis, but she didn’t exactly look carried away by sexual ecstasy, either.

“Promise?” Ben stopped thrusting for a moment.

Rey wound her arms around his ribcage and pulled him closer, so their stomachs brushed and their pelvises rubbed together as he began to move again. “I promise.”

He dipped into her mind just enough to know she was telling the truth. Once he knew she was, he exhaled heavily, letting himself enjoy the slick push and pull of intercourse. His weight settled over her, and all the sudden, _she_ was enjoying it, too. He could feel it in her mind, and in the way she undulated under him, squirming like she was trying to scratch an itch without using her fingers.

The broad, flat bone at the base of his pelvis ground into the apex of her thighs, splitting her nether lips, at the tipping point of each thrust, and she started to lift her hips, anticipating the contact. When her face screwed up again, and another soft noise left her, it wasn’t because of pain.

He wished it could last longer. He knew it wouldn’t. He couldn’t have gone slower, or been more gentle, even if he wanted to. As he grunted and pumped, pleasure uncoiled from his groin, climbed up his spine, and made his scalp tingle. When he felt a little muscle spasm around his cock, the tingle became seismic. His face contorted and an indignified, throaty moan tore out from behind his clenched jaw as he came, his hips rotating helplessly against hers as if that would let him get deeper as he ejaculated in intense, almost painful spurts.

Boneless, exhausted despite how brief their physical congress had been, he collapsed onto her. By the time he came to his senses and realized he was crushing her, their sweat was cooled and co-mingled.

Ben pulled out, half-flaccid now, but making her hiss with discomfort anyways, and flopped onto his back. He put his hand over his heart, as if that could slow its racing. He should have said something romantic, but only one thing came to mind.

“Now I definitely don’t want to be a Jedi.” He blurted out.

Rey was silent, panting a little. Then, she started giggling, breathlessly. They laughed, lying flat on their backs, helplessly. When he’d gotten control of himself, Ben rolled over and buried his face in between her breasts, kissing the pitter-patter of her heart. He rested his cheek against the sticky skin there, his eyelids flickering closed.

Even as his heartbeat settled, thumping contentedly in his chest as a sleepy, satisfied post-orgasmic heaviness settled over his limbs, hers didn’t. It kept racing against his ear, and something occurred to him. He lifted his head, cautiously. “Did you…?”

“Did I what?”

“Did you…” He trailed off, too humiliated to ask. He knew the answer. He’d been caught up in the moment and helpless to stop the trajectory of his own orgasm, but now, it was painfully obvious she hadn’t experienced one.

“I was close.” Rey said it as if that was supposed to make him feel better, and it only made him feel worse. “To something.”

Ben buried his head in the blanket, muffling an obscenity. He was _bad_ at this. He wasn’t used to being bad at anything. Frustration welled up in him and threatened to escalate to anger.

At least, he remembered, he could do something right, and make sure his clumsy fumbling didn’t get her pregnant. Still hiding his face, he groped in the pocket of his discarded pants and fished out the pill packet.

When he put a single pill between his thumb and forefinger and offered it to her, she cocked her head. “What is it?”

“It’s a contraceptive. Open up.” Rey did, and he put in on her tongue. She swallowed, making a face at the taste, and then sat up, gingerly. She winced, when she thought he wasn’t looking. Her thighs were smeared with the creamy white of his spend, and something else – bright, ugly red. Blood.

He found her canteen and washing rag, and crawled back to her on hands and knees, in supplication and remorse. When Rey realized what he was going to do, she protested. “I don’t want to waste water.”

Ben ignored her, kneeling in between her calves and flattening one thigh to the ground with his hand to expose her sex. Her knee twitched, awkwardly, like she wanted to close her legs and hide herself. It wasn’t her cunt she was embarrassed of, he realized, but the fact that she was bleeding. She thought of it as a sign of weakness.

He wiped her thighs first, methodically, from the crease at the top of them down to her knee. His seed was dribbling out of her in a way that would have given him a certain sense of masculine pride if he hadn’t been so self-conscious about his performance. He caught it with the folded edge of the towel, and then very careful moved it in a circle around the rim of her cunt. It came away bloody, and she hissed, very softly, through her teeth.

Ben didn’t really need to wipe any higher than that – there wasn’t any blood or semen in the notch at the top of her sex. But when he rubbed the bunched, wet towel over the nub tucked in there, her leg kicked, involuntarily.

He looked up at her face, surprised, and did it again, more gently. This time, her stomach only twitched. He sat back on his heels and looked at her, cocking his head to the side.

This part of her was not so mysterious now that he’d had a good look at it. Ben folded the towel over itself, to find a clean spot on it, and moved it once more down full the length of her slit, exerting a bit more pressure than he really needed to. She exhaled, softly, and shivered.

The damp towel was wet and cold. His _mouth_ would be wet and warm.

Rey smelled coppery and musky when he sunk onto his belly, pushed himself back on his elbows, and ducked his face in between her thighs. He half expected her to kick him, or struggle to close her legs, or to be embarrassed that his face was inches from her cunt. He should have known better. Nothing embarrassed Rey. She’d propped herself up on her elbows, watching him with rapt attention.

He kissed the fuzzed mound at the base of her abdomen, first, her hair tickling his nose. As he tilted his chin down, his nose parted the outer lips of her sex, by virtue of its protrusion from his face. He put his mouth between them, tentatively, in a chaste, closed kiss. When he kissed her there the second time, he opened his mouth. She tasted salty and tangy. The trace of his own musk and the faint copperiness of blood should have repulsed him, but it didn’t. It reminded him that he’d taken her virginity just moments before, and that excited him beyond reason.

Rey whimpered as he opened his mouth wide, wanting, irrationally, to devour her. _That_ was not a sound he associated with Rey – strong, assertive, sassy Rey. He wanted to hear it again. What had he done to elicit that, exactly? He hunted around with the flat of his tongue and found it. A soft, helpless moan escaped her, and he hummed with satisfaction against the nub, tugging it wetly into his mouth.

“ _Ben_.” Never mind the whimpers and the moans. _That_ was what he wanted to hear – his name. He sucked harder, rolling his tongue against the bud, and she said it again, wailing a little. Her hands clenched in his hair, and her thighs clenched around his head. She bucked up into his mouth and swore in a few languages , her voice rising in pitch with each obscenity – he thought his name was somewhere in there, too. He would have thought those were noises of pain, if he hadn’t been able to feel her pleasure, a white hot tickle at the base of her skull. He felt it crest and fill her consciousness, and then ebb, leaving her boneless.

Ben rose from between her trembling thighs, wiped off his slick chin and mouth, and gave her a crooked, self-deprecating smile. He felt a _bit_ better about himself, now. She panted up at him, wide-eyed and red in the face, as if she barely recognized him. “Am I good at that, at least?"

She just nodded, at a loss for words and out of breath. He waited, pointedly. He wanted to hear it. 

"You are..." Rey started laughing again, sucking in shaky lungfulls of air. This time, she sounded drunk with relief and endorphins. " _Very_ good at that."

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ben Solo is Bad at Everything Except Giving Head
> 
> P.S. ... but practice makes perfect, and if you ask nicely, maybe they'll get to practice a little more. 
> 
> P.P.S. I had to draw on a lot of awkward memories to write this. Woof, I need a cigarette. Or some feedback that that I didn't put these space babies through anything too awkward and awful. 
> 
> P.P.P.S I did not mean to freak anyone out by talking about the pain train. Yes, there will be plot. But, if you've read *anything* I've written, you know how this ends. Take heart.


	10. Chapter 10

Rey didn’t expect to sleep. She thought she’d be awake all night, as if staying alert would prolong the hours before Ben had to leave. On most nights, she was awake for hours, in any case. Alone, she would look at the moonlight reflect on the scratches on the hull of her AT-AT. She would listen to the shifting of the sand and wonder whether something larger than a critter was lurking outside.

Tonight, she thought she could use the wee hours to study his face while he slept – he’d huffed _kriff curfew_ when she’d brought it up – and try to memorize it. He had a crooked nose that didn’t quite fit his face. If he laid on his back, he snored a little, his mouth hanging slack. There was a bit of drool in the corner of it. His hair was sticking to his forehead – wrinkled like he was worried, even deep in sleep –  crusted into ringlets by dried sweat.

His face was infinitely interesting to her, and she likely wouldn’t see another one like it for years, but somehow, she fell asleep. Maybe the drowsy, warm feeling that had come over her after he’d put his head between her legs had something to do with it.

***

 “Rey.” Ben’s hand was heavy and flat on her shoulder blade when she woke up. Her face was pressed into the scratchy blanket, and she didn’t lift it or open her eyes. It was odd to wake up on her belly, her back exposed. She never slept in that position – usually, she curled onto her side, her vulnerable back pressed against the side of her AT-AT, or laid flat on her back so she couldn’t be caught unawares.

“Is it – ” He kissed her shoulder reassuringly as she asked, dreading his answer.

“Not yet.” Ben answered like a question, his breath tickling the downy hairs on the nape of her neck. His hand bore down into her back, pressing the air from her lungs, and then smoothed downwards, into the dip at the small of it. When she didn’t say anything, or open her eyes, he inhaled nervously, and then exhaled, heavily. “I… I want you again.”

Rey rolled over onto her side, feeling his fingers trail across her hip and to her belly when she did. Without opening her eyes, she could feel him hovering over her, a huge, obtrusive presence in her tiny shelter. His arm settled around her, the slight softness of his abdomen pressed against the backs of his thighs, and then he was wetly kissing the bump of bone at the back of neck, beseechingly. His longest finger crooked in her navel, gently, as if to get her attention, and she opened her eyes.

Unexpectedly, moisture leaked out from under her eyelids when she did. She blinked, furiously, and rolled back onto her stomach to hide her face in the blanket, trapping his hand underneath her. She couldn’t let him see her cry. It went against everything she’d learned – taught herself – on Jakku.

“…Rey?” She made a muffled, embarrassed noise into the blanket. He craned around to kiss her cheeks and ears, his hand grasping her chin and turning her face to the side. When her cheek was pressed to the floor, and her profile exposed to him, he kissed her eyelid, his lips getting wet and slippery from the hot, shameful tears. “Please…”

Rey was stiff from laying on the ground, and sore from _him_ , but she edged one leg to the side, anyways, feeling his member glide up the inside of her thigh, the skin of it velvety and damp.

“I meant please don’t cry.” Ben said, in a low voice in her ear. He didn’t shift his weight off of her, though.

“I’m not crying.” She lied, keeping one cheek flattened against the blanket, and closing her eyes. He huffed against the crown of her head.

“Roll over, then.”

“I want you, too.” That was not a lie. She did, even if he’d hurt her the night before. The insatiable curiosity she felt towards him hadn’t been satisfied yet, and physical pain didn’t daunt her. What she _didn’t_ want him privy to was her emotional pain – so she would remain face-down. “I want you like this.”

Large fingers tugged the sticky, messy hair off her neck and face, and she felt him studying her profile for a long moment. One more – surprisingly chaste – kiss was pressed to the corner of her jaw and her neck, and then he worked his hips in between her thighs in earnest.

Ben was better at finding his way inside, this time. He nudged the head of his cock into her without much trial and error, and then pressed his hips forwards until the wiry hair of his groin was flush with her backside. Rey sucked in a deep, slow breath as he did, burying her face in the crook of her arm.

“Hurt?” The one-word question came out strained.

“No.” It was only a _little_ lie. The place between her legs was tender, but the sharp, stabbing pain – the sensation of having something much too large penetrating and tearing her – was gone. She felt uncomfortably full, as if something was nudging against her organs, but she could still breath around it. She focused on that – breathing in and out. That, and not crying.

He exhaled against her shoulder, paused as if to steel himself, braced one elbow on either side of her head, and started to move. The first time, he’d felt frantic, arrhythmic, as if he couldn’t believe it was _really happening_. This time, he went slowly, but so deeply she winced a few times.

It had just started to feel good again – the pressure in her abdomen transforming from uncomfortable to an oddly pleasant thrumming – when Ben withdrew from her, his shaft leaving smears of something wet and on her thighs and backside.

“Roll over.” His tone was low and ragged, and didn’t brook argument. It wasn’t a request, and Rey, who was nothing if not willful, for some reason obeyed.

As soon as she was on her back, Ben was on her again, kissing her roughly, hooking his arm behind her left knee, and pushing it up against her ribs. He penetrated her again, this time without preamble or delay. Rey squeaked, startled at the sudden intrusion and the vulnerable position he’d put her in.  

“I want you like _this_.” Ben panted, brow creased sternly. He jerked her leg higher and pushed in deeper, hitting something deep and sensitive inside her. It wasn’t the kind of sensitivity that made her wince or bite her lip, but the kind that made her sputter in unintelligible approval. He ground against that spot until the wordless noise became his name and her lower back arched off the floor unconsciously.

“There?” He grunted out the word, and when she nodded, helplessly, he did it again,

The odd tingling she’d known under his tongue crept up her spine as he kept moving the same way, getting faster and faster. His arms were stretched out and braced, and she couldn’t wrap her arms around him, or touch him at all, really. For lack of anything else to do, she put her arms over her chest, as if that could contain the heat building in it.

Ben shook his head, staring down at her. “I wanted you on your back so I could see you.”

Rey lifted her arms over her head, splaying them out, and suddenly, he let go of her leg, and clamped both his hands down over her wrists, pinning her. Her every instinct was to fight him off, but she didn’t. She barely recognized herself, in her own supplication. It was completely unlike her, and his dominance was unlike him. It was almost as if they were other people, strangers, having sex.

“Are you close?” Ben buried his face in her neck, still thrusting but becoming less rhythmic. He sounded nervous, and she knew why. _He_ was close.

“Yes.” She wriggled underneath him, wishing he didn’t have her wrists trapped. She needed to be touched at the secret spot between her legs, close to where he was pushing in and out of her, but not quite – “Can you touch that spot? With your hand?”

Ben raised his head for a second when she blurted that out, his hips slowing. He looked almost confused, and then he grinned. Suddenly, he wasn’t the stranger anymore, but the boy she knew – nervous, but eager to please. His hand crammed in between their bellies and found the nub, working it furiously.

One hand liberated, Rey reached for his hair, and tugged him closer, pressing her mouth blindly to his. Their mouths were sloppy and desperate, and she tasted blood right before the tingle roared up her spinal cord and along her scalp, her legs and abdomen contracting in spasm.

She’d bitten Ben’s lip, Rey realized, hazily, when the feeling had passed, and he was bleeding. He kept kissing her, anyways, and she felt, rather than heard his moan as he went rigid, the muscles of his abdomen straining against her lower stomach. He hid his face in her neck, back heaving, as the peculiar, foreign warmth flooded her belly.

She murmured soothing nonsense into his ear, and wondered if the greenish tint of dawn was on top of the dunes yet.

***

Ben laid on his back, one arm keeping Rey tucked against his chest, the other holding a tiny blue marble up the light, examining it. Rey recognized it – the first item she’d ever floated in the air. He’d tucked it away in his pocket. He saw her watching the early dawn light catch on the marble, and told her, “Something to remember this by.”

Rey felt her breath hitch. She tried to make a joke, to prove she wasn’t going to cry, but she sounded impossibly pathetic when she did, like a little girl. “You need a marble to remember this?”

He lowered the marble, curling it into his big hand on top of his chest, and regarded her very seriously. “I’ll never forget this.”

“Me, neither.” Rey whispered. She thought of what he’d told her in his bunk on the transport, and how it had sounded like a vow. “You’re my first and last, too.”

They were silent for a moment. “I don’t want to be just your first and last.” Ben sounded almost angry. He sat up, all of the sudden, displacing her from his arms. “I want to be everything in between, too.”

Warily, Rey sat up, clutching the blanket to her chest as if that could protect her from heartache. “What do you mean?”

“I mean I’ll come back.” His jaw set, determinedly. “Here.”

Rey felt mournfulness settle below her ribs like a stone. She’d heard those words before, and she’d believed them. For years now, she’d wrestled with fear that it had been a mistake to believe them. If it had been, well, she wouldn’t make that mistake again. “No one comes back to Jakku.”

“I’ll come back, with my father’s ship, and I’ll take you away.” Ben was deadly earnest. He’d made her feel naïve, and unsophisticated during their dalliance – she didn’t know the right words for things, or what sand monkeys were, or what bantha steak was. Now, for a moment, she felt like he was younger and more ignorant to the ways of the world than she was. She suspected that was willful ignorance. “My mother is a Senator. She can get you a refugee visa for the Inner Rim.”

Ben believed what he was saying. That was painfully obvious. Rey didn’t believe it.

“I can’t leave Jakku. My family is coming back for me.” It felt more like an excuse than anything else, and Rey saw the flicker of disbelief and pity in his eyes again, before it was replaced with burning hope.

“I’ll find them.” When he saw the look of sorrow she surely wore, he amended, “Or I’ll find out what happened to them. My father is the most famous smuggler in the galaxy. He knows everyone. He can find anyone.” He was babbling, his words picking up frantic, pleading speed.

Rey looked at the scratched wall of her AT-AT, imagining all the worlds he’d told her about, and the ones she’d seen through his eyes. They seemed endless, and in the moment, intimidating. “Where would I go?”

“I don’t know, but we’d be together.”

Rey swallowed hard, and started counting scratch marks. “That sounds like a personal attachment.”

“Yes, it does.” Ben cupped the side of her face with his hand, forcing her to look at him. He looked unimaginably and unbearably tender. His thumb ran across her cheek to the corner of her mouth.

She reminded him, in a cracked voice. “A Jedi – ”

“I can’t be a Jedi.” He said it in a hot whisper, like a confession. He didn’t let her look away.

Rey thought of the way he effortlessly used his powers, and the way his eyes lit up when he did. She thought of the steady, warm hum of energy that radiated off him, like the sun. His fingertips almost seemed to spark with it. It would a sin to waste something like that. “Ben – ”

“I am very attached to you. I want to be attached to you for the rest of my life.” He rested his forehead on hers. “Please.”

Something niggled in her mind – not a compulsion to say anything, or to agree to his outlandish plans. He wasn’t tricking her. He was compelling her to believe him, to understand that it was useless to resist his conviction. Rey closed her eyes for a moment. A bright hope – a hope that she could have another life, and have _answers_ about her old life –  had settled into her heart, displacing some of the misery of the past eleven years. She was done waiting, for better or for worse. “If you come back, I – I’ll go with you.”

Ben exhaled heavily, as if he’d been holding his breath. He kissed her, reverently, on her brow and nose and cheeks. “I _will_ come back for you.” Another kiss, fiercer this time, pressed to her mouth. “I promise.”

***

Rey sat on the top of the ridge when the New Republic transport whirred to life. Red was staining the dunes on the horizon as it groaned and lifted its heft off the sand, hovering for a moment.

It never rained on Jakku, but the clouds on the western horizon were rolling ominously closer, brown with dust. It was a sandstorm. Rey knew the secret to surviving sandstorms was outrunning sandstorms, and huddling in the safety of her AT-AT. Alone. Again.

Rey didn’t run for safety right away. By the time the ship disappeared and she turned away from the oncoming storm, the sun had risen in the east, the color of blood.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *anxiously throws smut at you to distract you from the foreshadowing* 
> 
> P.S. Constructive comments are worth 50 portions. They help me help you!


	11. Chapter 11

Seeing Luke Skywalker on Hosnian Prime was like seeing a wild animal in the Senate. He waited, impassively, in the spaceport’s hangar. He didn’t need to wave or announce his presence to his nephew. If the navigation system on the transport had gone out as they’d been entering the atmosphere, Ben could have taken over for the pilot and landed the hulking transport perfectly – such was the strength and familiarity of his uncle’s Force signature. It was like a beacon the moment the ship entered the planet’s airspace.

“Hello, Uncle.” Ben dropped his duffle, awkwardly, at his uncle’s feet. He didn’t move to embrace him, or shake his hand. Luke didn’t even uncross his arms. In the colorful menagerie of humans and aliens at the spaceport, he looked somber and threadbare in his brown and beige robes.

“Ben.” His uncle had never been one for overt shows of affection, but even so, this was unusually stoic. He gave no explanation as to why he’d met Ben at the spaceport, or what he was doing away from his isolated academy on Yavin 4.

The pair walked in strained, awkward silence to a sleek black speeder. Once it was airborne, the city’s spires zipped by in bright flashes that were overwhelming after seeing nothing but sand for two weeks. Ben felt his stomach roil with adrenaline, and he had a sudden, mad urge to tell his uncle everything – about Rey, about his future. About _their_ future.

He knew, though, that his mother would be far more sympathetic to his cause. Ever the consummate politician, Leia Organa would champion it to Luke, once Ben had won her over.

“I hope it was worth it.” Luke spoke, finally. Ben looked at him sharply. “Breaking the Code, to follow a foolish impulse.” For an awful moment, Ben wondered if Luke was referring to his sexual impulses and how he’d broken the Code the night before – and that morning, again – in Rey’s AT-AT. He felt his ears go hot, but Luke kept talking, his emotionless, flat voice breaking for a second to reveal exasperation. “A speeder, Ben?”

“I was drunk.” Ben knew that was no excuse – in fact, in Luke’s eyes, it probably made his actions even more egregious – but he was so relieved that he blurted it out.

“Your behavior is unbecoming of a Jedi.” His uncle’s composure was regained, and uneasy silence resumed.

 _If only,_ Ben thought grimly, looking out the window of the speeder, _you knew._

***

It was hard to imagine for Ben to imagine that his parents had been young once, gallivanting around the galaxy with Luke. It was hard to imagine them being madly in love, and hard to imagine Luke being – well, any _fun._

He’d have to hope they still understood fun, and love.

The threesome sat at three corners of his mother’s dinging table, each picking silently at their dinners. From their sidelong glances, Ben could tell Luke and Leia were communicating with each other. Aside from Ben, Luke was the _only_ person Leia allowed into her head.

He decided not to intrude on their exchange, although he could have. Han, totally oblivious to what was transpiring between his wife and her twin, he decided, was the weak link. “I need to borrow the Falcon.”

“Really?” Han lowered his glass. “How’d that last joyride work out for you?”

“Han, that’s not funny.” Leia’s jaw twitched. It was something she said with some regularity.

“I promise I’ll bring it back in one piece.” Ben entreated.

“Ben, I want _you_ in one piece.” His mother sounded testy.

“I’m… I’m not.” Ben answered, lamely. It was the only way he could think to describe the physicality of missing Rey. He might as well have been missing an arm, like Luke. There was a blank space in his consciousness of the Force, where she _should_ be. His head buzzed with emptiness, when it should be full of her amusement, her tenderness, her humor – all things in her head that she didn’t explicitly show him, but that he couldn’t resist looking at. “I’m not in one piece.”

The room went curiously silent. Ben hadn’t quite thought this through, he realized. He’d intended to divulge his relationship with Rey to his mother, in private. He hadn’t expected his entire family to be staring him down like hungry rathars. Everything he could say to explain his predicament seemed hopelessly inadequate.

“There’s a girl – ” Leia choked on her drink, spitting liquid across the table. Han dropped his fork, startled. Only Luke remained impassive. Ben soldiered on, gracelessly. “ – back on Jakku.”

“ _Jakku_?” Han looked torn between delight that his son wasn’t asexual, after all, and skepticism. “There are humans on that sand-box?” He stopped for a second, thoughtfully, and then added, half-seriously, “I mean, if she’s not human, that’s fine – ”

Ben ignored the jibe. “She lives alone in an old AT-AT out in the desert. She doesn’t have a family, but if a Senator sponsored her visa – .”

“Ben.” Leia looked moved – and still visibly shocked –  but sad. “I wish I could help. But I can’t get a visa for every orphan in the galaxy – ”

“She’s _not_ just any orphan.” Ben prickled. “She’s different.”

“Your motives aren’t purely… _altruistic_ , are they?” Leia sounded almost embarrassed to be asking, as if she was afraid of what he would admit. Her cheeks pinked.

“I promised her.” Ben faltered. He understood her implication, as he was sure Han and Luke did, and he didn’t deny it. “I promised I would come back.”

“Ben.” His mother shifted in her seat. “You and… this girl. You’re from different _worlds_ , metaphorically and physically. You can’t…”

“Mother.” Ben snapped. He’d never known her to be classist, and somehow, the ugliness of it shocked him. “Because she’s a nobody and I’m a Senator’s son?”

“Because you’re going to be Jedi.” Luke interrupted. Leia made a soft noise of deference.

As a last resort, Ben turned to his uncle. “Uncle Luke, she is strong in the Force.” His desperation made his voice crack. He could almost taste victory, even as it slipped through his fingers. He could picture Rey on Hosnian Prime, marveling at the height of the skyscrapers and all of the colors. He could see her on Yavin 4, moving through the forms with a training saber, a trickle of sweat soaking the nape of her neck and making her little hairs there curl fiercely. He could imagine tasting that sweat. “Untrained, but stronger than she knows – ”

“Just because I do not know the ways of the world, Ben,” Luke’s voice went gravelly with the euphemism. “Does not mean I do not _understand_ them.”

“She should learn the ways of the _Force_.” Ben knew the passion and vehemence in his voice was _unbefitting of a Jedi_ , in Luke’s words, but he didn’t care.

Luke’s eyes narrowed. “A Jedi knows no passion.”

Ben – against his better judgment – rose to the occasion, retorting, his voice thick with implication, “Maybe I already _have_ known passion.”

The room went uncomfortably silent again. Leia looked vaguely ill. Han coughed, after a moment, to break the silence. “Really?”

Ben flushed hotly. “Will you lend me your kriffing ship, or not?”

His father looked as if he was about to agree when Luke said, in a low voice, “If you go to her, then you will be lost to me.”

It was as if Ben had been floating, and suddenly, gravity had reasserted its force on him. “What?”

Luke was breathing heavily through his nostrils; it was the only indication of his emotion. “You cannot live in two worlds, Ben.”

“She can train alongside me. She – ”

“You cannot cling to personal attachments and hope to join the Order. You know the Code.” Luke exhaled sharply. “And I know _you_. You would never know peace, if you couldn’t have her for yourself.”

Ben stared at his uncle, unable to refute the truth of that statement. Perhaps he’d labored under some grand delusion that he could eschew the Jedi Code, and still learn the ways of the Force. There was so much left to learn – and no place for him in the world, aside from that of a Force sensitive. He knew that, in his heart of hearts. He was different from other people. He would _always_ be different.  

He also knew – “I will never know peace if you keep us apart.”

“Ben.” Leia interjected, hopelessly. Han stared at his half-full plate, in uncomfortable silence.

“There is no emotion, there is peace.” Luke said, in rote response, almost as if he was trying to re-center himself in the midst of this struggle.

“I _know_ the Code.” Ben’s voice was _thick_ with emotion, even as he acknowledged his uncle’s words.

Luke continued, undeterred. His voice did not rise in volume. If anything, he sounded more serene. “There is no passion, there is serenity.”

“Kriff the Code!” Ben roared. Something throbbed at his temple. His plate trembled on the table in front of him, and cracked. “I love her. I won’t lose her.” Even if he’d yelled it out in the storm and fire of his temper, it was true. He knew it at surely as he’d known anything

 “Luke.” Leia’s voice was quiet but strained. “Ben needs to be on Yavin 4, with you. It’s too dangerous to leave him untrained, with his… power. We decided that _years_ ago. If something happened – ”

“I can hear you, you know?” Ben growled. “Then again, I wasn’t included in this conversation _years ago_ either – ”

The twins ignored him. Even if they were speaking aloud, they were still in their own binary orbit. Luke’s fingers were flexing and unflexing on the table. “It is too dangerous to train him if he continues down this path. It is a path to the dark side.”

Ben made a soft, derogatory noise. Rey – the feelings she inspired in him – was anything but dark.

Leia paled, and suddenly, Ben was acutely aware that she was communicating with Luke silently. This time, he didn’t resist. He listened.

 _You foresaw this._ Leia’s mind, birdlike and sharp.

 _There is darkness in him._ Luke’s Force signature was like a low rumble. _There has always been darkness in him._

 _I will not lose him to that darkness._ Leia’s agony and fear were palpable to him.

“I can hear you.” Ben whispered.

Luke turned his gaze on him. _If you are not a Jedi, I fear what you will become._

Leia exhaled in relief. It was clear to Ben, then, that they had made the decision to send him back to Yavin 4. It was a decision that once again, he’d had no part in.

Ben pushed himself back from the table. He shoved all of the plates and cutlery off of it and onto the floor with an outstretched hand and a rush of furious power, and ran from the room.  

***

On the rooftop spire, Ben fished the blue marble out of his pocket and held it up on his palm. He nudged it, gently, and it rose off his palm to hover in the air. As he squinted at it, the dark of the night and the lights of the city blurred, and he could imagine it was a blue planet, floating in the starry abyss of space. Perhaps a far-away planet he and Rey could run away to.

“Ben.” Han had followed him to the roof, doggedly.

He hid the marble, for some reason. It felt like a secret talisman, even if it was nothing more than a sphere of cheap glass and dye.

“You like this girl?” Han paused for dramatic effect. “It’s not just, you know, because she’s the first girl who let you – ?”

“ _Father_.” Ben had intended to stay stoically silent, but his father’s comment broke his resolve.  “I love her.” It was easier – and more purposeful – to say it this time. Now, the words were tinged with regret. He should have told _her_ , when he’d had the chance.

Han cocked a brow. “Is she _that_ kind of girl?”

“What kind of girl?”

Han elbowed him in the ribs, but his question was serious. “The kind that’s worth the trouble.”

Ben wasn’t quite sure what his father’s angle was. Han didn’t care much for Luke’s mysticism and near-religious fervor, and he’d been quiet during the row at dinner. “…she’s that kind of girl.”

Han’s face split into a crooked grin. He reached over and up, and ruffled Ben’s hair as if he was still a knee-high youngling. “The Falcon’s in Hanger 12-A. Your mother’s going to _kill_ me for this.”

“Thank you.” Ben’s mouth went dry and his throat tightened. He hadn’t embraced his father in years – not since he’d outflanked him in height and breadth – but suddenly, he had an overwhelming urge to. He bent awkwardly to do it, clinging like a little boy. His father smelled like engine oil and smoke, and it was strangely comforting.

“All right, all right, all right.” Han patted his back, awkwardly. He sounded uncomfortable but secretly pleased. “Save the touchy-feely stuff for your girl.”

***

The only landmark on Jakku – besides quarries and strip mining operations – was Niima Outpost. Ben couldn’t feel Rey’s Force signature and navigate using it, so he landed on the outskirts of Niima.

He still didn’t feel her in the Force, once he’d landed. Her absence was conspicuous. He told himself it was probably nothing. He wasn’t as attuned to her as he was to his mother and uncle. And, after all, he hadn’t been able to sense her right away when he’d first landed on Jakku.

Her AT-AT was deserted. Sand had blown up against the sides of it, as if there had been a storm. It was dusk – the time she would normally retreat to its metal walls and relative safety.

“Rey?” Ben crept into the shelter, feeling like a trespasser, and crouched in the dimness. The blanket they’d made love on was strewn across the floor, still. It was stained and smelled like sex when he squatted over it and rubbed it between his thumb and forefinger.

One of her boots was on the floor, too, strewn haphazardly into a corner. Ben stared at it, his gut twisting. Rey would never leave her boots. The sand was hot enough to burn the soles of her feet by mid-morning. Even more ludicrous was the idea of her leaving _one_ boot.

He stumbled over to the second compartment of her AT-AT, his fingers fumbling with the hatch. Her speeder was parked inside the gloomy hollow of the metal beast, its sides cold. The engine hadn’t been running recently.

Her boot was here. Her speeder was here. _She should be here._

Outside, Ben paced in concentric circles around the AT-AT. The sandstorm had blown over any tracks in the sand but his own. He yelled her name again, futility, into the twilight.

No answer. Breaking into a run, he went towards the ridge east of her home. From there, he would surely see her, trudging home across the desert with some funny story about how she’d forgotten her shoe and her speeder had broken down.

As he scaled the dune, Ben tripped on something, the tip of his boot catching. He crashed, hard, into the cooling sand, breathing heavily. Spitting out a mouthful of yellow grains, he lifted his head to see what had felled him.

Rey’s staff – her one, true, constant companion – was half-buried in the sand.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Parents are the worst, except when they're the best (Han!). 
> 
> P.S. REY? WHERE ART THOU?
> 
> P.P.S. I'm not trying to make Luke and Leia totally unsympathetic here, although they certainly seem that way from Ben's point of view. I hope it was apparent they think they are acting in his best interest. 
> 
> P.P.P.S. My official headcanon is that that Ben basically admitting to his family that he finally put the P in the V is what swayed Han. He's secretly proud he's takin' after the old man.
> 
> P.P.P.P.S. I am thinking of changing the summary of this story - thoughts?!


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> See end-notes for warning.

Ben would have built a lightsaber in the next year – his own weapon, made from a Khyber crystal he would found himself, with a hilt designed for his large hand. Infinity better than a training saber. Heavier, more graceful, and of his own design.

He didn’t have a weapon with him, now. Even a training saber would better than _nothing_. Ben’s hand flexed, fingers splaying fully, as he stalked into the hub of Niima Outpost at dawn. If he’d been like his father – unable to use the Force – he would have had to use his bare hands for the work of violence, absent a weapon.

He had something better. He already knew how to make people hurt using it.

“Unkar Plutt!”

The scavengers milling about stopped short, their natural and learnt curiosity getting the better of them. Ben knew he was a sight – a human, on Jakku, dressed in black rather than sand-colors, and _shaking_ with rage.

The Crolute walked – or rather waddled, as he was short and fat – from behind his crudely constructed counter. He hadn’t started doing business for the day, and he looked cross, as if Ben’s anger was an inconvenience, and not a threat. “Who’s asking?”

Ben stretched out his hand, and remembered the boy he’d choked, all those years ago, before he’d gone to Yavin 4. He thought about the child who’d stolen his toy, at six, and how he’d howled in pain. That had been an accident. This time, he did it on purpose. Something far more important than a toy had been stolen.

The Crolute’s fat, gray face drained of blood, and suddenly, he was on his knees, making high-pitched sounds of panic and scrabbling at the collar of his tunic as if _that_ was what was strangling him.

There was something satisfying, after all, about using the Force, his fingers clawing in the hair in pantomime. Ben advanced, his feet sinking in the sand, his hand still outstretched. He flexed it, and Plutt’s grey face contorted.

“The scavenger Rey.” He stopped only when he was looming over the kneeling mountain of flesh.

“Who?” The Crolute choked, his rat-like eyes racing back and forth with panic.

Without thinking, Ben twisted his hand, viciously, and Plutt gagged. “The girl in the desert. Where is she?”

Plutt mouthed _I can’t_ , and, with great effort, Ben inhaled, and exhaled. His anger was burning hot but controlled, or at least just controlled enough to avoid snapping the Crolute’s fat neck. His grip loosened, and the creature sagged onto the sand with relief. “I don’t know.”

Ben didn’t ask again. He didn’t bother. He curled his fist tight again, and Plutt’s eyes widened, blood vessels popping inside the whites of them. He shook his head, frantically.

But the boss of Niima Outpost wasn’t lying. Ben saw as much when he ripped into his simple mind. His desires were simple – money, water, portions – and disgusting. _Rey._ His expertise was in cheating and taking advantage. He didn’t know much about the galaxy off-world, and he didn’t know where Rey was.

Still, Ben couldn’t let himself to believe it. Rey had called Plutt the _boss_. She’d feared him – the kind of uneasy, nauseous fear she refused to acknowledge was actually fear. The Crolute must know _something._ “I’m going to end your life, you miserable sack of – ”

“Wait.” Plutt wheezed, holding up his pudgy hands for mercy. “There’s a skin trader on-world. He passed through here.”

Ben loosened his grip. It wasn’t mercy. He needed _answers_. “Where?”

Plutt’s eyes were watering. His voice was broken and damaged, from the crush of his windpipes. “Near Cratertown.”

***

Kelvin Ravine rose in a rocky crescent from the sand, like a scar on the face of Jakku. Flying low over the jagged, sand-filled canyon, Ben scanned the dunes. Teedos scattered like rodents as the Falcon roared over them, but otherwise, there was no sign of life. The Force felt deadened out in the rocky crevasse.

Cratertown was almost as desolate. It was situated in the far-western tip of the ravine, where’s its last tendrils disappeared into the sand. It perched on the lip of a dry crater, just a collection of shacks and a slummy cantina called _Ergel’s._

Ben didn’t have any experience in the matter, but a cantina seemed as good a place as any to inquire after a skin trader. He stood awkwardly inside the doorframe, fidgeting. Choking Unkar Plutt had felt good, had given him a rush of heady adrenaline. Now, he had no outlet for that, or for his simmering panic and anger. His limbs trembled at being pent up.

A human male – sand and sun weathered almost beyond recognition, but definitely a human – whistled to get his attended. “I’m looking for a skin trader.”

The bartender – Ergel? – sized him up, eyes crinkling with humor. “I bet you are. You look like you need to blow off some steam.”

Ben thought briefly about choking _him_ , too, and thought better of it. “Is he still on-world?” He knew the answer as he asked the question. When he’d landed on Jakku, he’d tried to rationalize or explain away the absence of Rey’s Force signature. He’d known, even then, even if he hadn’t wanted to believe it, that something was wrong.

“No.” The bartender slung a grimy rag over his shoulder, and squinted at him. “He doesn’t do much business here. No one has the credits.”

Ben would have asked why the trader was on Jakku, then, if there was no market for his wares, but he didn’t have to. He _knew._ “What’s he called? The skin trader?”

“Jardy.” It was a surprisingly innocuous name for someone Ben imagined to be absolutely vile. It could have been the name of any child at Luke’s academy, smiling and innocent.

“Did he…” Ben’s ears rang, for a moment, when he imagined Rey dragged, kicking and screaming, from her AT-AT. Maybe one of the trader’s grubby hands had latched onto her boot, and she’d kicked it off, trying in vain to escape. “Have anyone with him?”

The bartender laughed softly, and when his defenses were down, Ben peered into his mind. The man thought that _nobod_ y was an _anybody_ on Jakku, especially once they became the property of a skin trader.

“I don’t ask.” The bartender poured out a shot of knockback nectar. “That’s why he comes here to restock his inventory.”

Ben gritted his teeth. “Where was he headed?”

“Like I said.” The bartender pushed the shot across the bar-top towards him. “I don’t ask.”

It was stupid to use the Force at a time like this. Ben _knew_ that. Revealing himself was risky. It drew unwanted attention. Luke’s teachings had impressed that much upon him. And, while Ben was certainly not above abusing his powers, this man was not worth his wrath.

Still, the tingling energy in his fingers had risen up his arms to his elbows. Years of careful conditioning by Luke had fallen away. Right under the surface of a controlled Jedi initiate was a raging boy, ready to lash out at anyone who hurt him. _There was no peace._

Ben's hand twitched out, of its own accord, and the glass went flying into the wall behind the man’s head. It shattered there, startling the odd drinker or two in the cantina out of their stupor.

***

Ben turned off the tracker and transmissions in the cockpit of the Falcon before he plugged in coordinates. Han Solo frequented Takodana, specifically the watering hole there, but it was the _last_ place he would look for Ben. It was the kind of place where Han moved with ease, drinking, consorting, making jokes. Ben, by contrast, was uncomfortable there, as uncomfortable as Han was at Luke’s school, surrounded by solemn Force-sensitives.

Han would know how to find a skin trader named Jardy. Of that, Ben was certain. He was less certain that Han could withstand the force of his mother’s personality. Berated and screamed at enough, he might give Ben up.

So, absent Han’s dubious expertise, Ben settled for the next best thing.

Ben would consider Maz Kanata a humanoid, if she wasn’t so disproportionate and small. The diminutive being straightened up to her unimpressive full height when he approached her in the cantina. Her prune-like hands adjusted the lenses of her eye-goggles, as if she needed them to see him. “Ben Solo.”

Ben didn’t have time for niceties and reunions. “I’m looking for a skin trader.”

Maz’s face changed, and suddenly, her soft, wizened voice became thunderous. “ _Ben Solo_ – ”

“Kriffing hell, Maz, it’s not like _that_.” Ben held up his hands, defensively. Maz, like his parents, had an uncanny ability to make him feel like a defensive boy again. “He’s got something of mine.”

Maz ground her sharp little teeth, suspiciously. “You haven’t fallen into your father’s line of work, have you?”

“Not business.” Ben shifted on his feet. “I’m asking as a personal favor, Maz.”

“Hmmm.” If he didn’t know better, he could swear she, like him, could plunder people’s minds. “What is it you’re looking for?

“Jardy, by way of Jakku.”

Maz rolled her eyes behind her goggles. “No, _what_ are you looking for?”

Ben hesitated to admit this. He knew of his father’s long-standing – if tumultuous – relationship with the humanoid. He wouldn’t put it past her to send Han a transmission the second she sent him on his way. “A girl.”

Maz lifted her goggles, and her tiny, deep-set eyes widened as far as they physically could. Now, when she repeated his name for the third time, she sounded impressed that he was chasing a girl across the galaxy. “Ben _Solo_.”

“Maz.”

“I know the name.” Maz conceded, disappointed he didn’t want to keep talking about _the girl_. She folded her tiny, wrinkled hands over her lap. “But I don’t tolerate trash like that in my _reputable_ establishment.”

Maz’s watering hole was anything but reputable – Leia had yelled at Han for hours the first time he’d taken Ben there, when he was just a wide-eyed youngling – but Ben didn’t want to offend her. “What … _less_ reputable establishment would he frequent?”

Maz mused for a moment. “A seedy one on Keyorian, or Brentaal IV, or Belsavis. Or a fancy one, like the Outlander Club. Coruscant. Corellia. He could be anywhere.” Ben’s heart sunk, but Maz went on. “But _eventually_ , he will go to Arcan IV. All skin traders do.”

“Arcan spaceport?” Ben knew the name. “On the Perlemian trade route?”

Max grinned. “You are Han Solo’s boy, after all.” As if she’d just remembered, she asked, “Did you bring that Wookie I like?”

Ben paused. “I’m… alone.”

Maz cocked her head. “Secret?”

“Yes.” He couldn’t influence her mind, he had a feeling – she was sharp, and wary – but he tried to impress upon her the seriousness of not telling his parents his whereabouts just using the tone of his voice.

“Very well.” Maz smiled, slowly. “I’m good at keeping those.”

***

Arcan IV was an urban planet, but, unlike Hosnian Prime, it was a dirty and low-slung one. The buildings were in disrepair, smoke-stained, and graffitied. It made Ben uncomfortable to imagine his father there, among the unsavory figures he passed on the streets.

None of the smugglers, traders, and criminals he brushed shoulders with seemed like a reliable source of information. Not that he doubted they could point him in the right direction – they all seemed intimately familiar with the criminal underbelly of the galaxy – but he thought they’d just as soon jump him.

Rey was here. He _knew_ it, despite how crowded this world was and how blurred the Force was. One of these creatures – maybe the Ishi Tib, or the Ithorian, or the Jawa, or Maker forbid, the Hutt – would think they could _buy_ her, like a piece of bantha meat.

Following breadcrumbs across the galaxy had distracted him. Now, the bile rose in his throat again.

“Hey, handsome.” Ben jerked around, turning red. A prostitute leaned out of a narrow, dark doorway, her breasts almost completely bare. “You look like you’re looking for someone.”

She smiled suggestively, and suddenly, he was struck with inspiration. He drew closer. “I’m looking for a girl.”

The girl’s mouth twisted in an ugly imitation of a smile. “You’re in luck.”

“I’m looking for one girl in particular.” He felt his pockets, finding the credit chip there, and added, “And I can pay.”

The woman batted her eyelashes, misunderstanding him. They were clumped with heavy gold make-up. “I can pretend to be her, if you pay enough.”

Ben blinked at her, confused. They were speaking the same language, Galactic Basic, but she might as well have been communicating in Huttese for all he understood where this conversation was going. “Do you work for Jardy?”

The woman drew herself up, offended. It was clear she knew him, or knew of his reputation, at least. “I’m not a skin girl. I’m a _prostitute_. I own my own body.”

“I’m looking for a…” Ben’s jaw tightened. It was heart-wrenching to refer to Rey using this word, but it was the only way this woman would understand him. “Skin girl.”

The prostitute wrinkled her nose. “To each his own, I guess. I’ve heard of him.” Ben could have looked in her mind, but he decided to let her earn her credits. He waited. “He brought in a new shipment last night.”

She must have seen the look on his face when he heard the word _shipment_ and realized he wasn’t looking for a skin girl for recreational purposes, because, suddenly, her expression softened. She didn’t look quite so hardened by her life and hardship. “You’re looking for a _particular_ skin girl?”

“Yes.” A particular girl, with brown hair and an out-of-place accent and chapped lips.

“You look like a nice Inner Rim boy.” The prostitute looked almost tender and maternal. She touched his hair, doubtful. “He didn’t go hunting on your home world, did he?”

Ben swallowed hard. He knew what she was implying – skin traders, like Jardy, preyed on the fringe of society. They snatched girls and, on occasion, boys they thought no one would miss. For all anyone in the galaxy knew, Rey fit that description. Anyone except for _him._

When he didn’t answer, the prostitute sighed, resigned. “Jardy drinks at Lemo and Sanda’s den, but his freighter is in the spaceport. That’s where all his new inventory will be.” 

“Thank you.” Ben could have hugged her, prostitute or not. “What do I owe you?”

The woman laughed, a low, unsettling sound. “A kiss.” Ben felt his ears go hot, and he knew he looked as mortified as he felt. The prostitute laughed harder. She grasped his collar, tugged him closer, and smacked a kiss onto the side of his nose, smushing it. “What’s your name, handsome?”

Ben almost said his given name, but he stuttered and corrected himself. He said the first thing that came to mind, affixing the first letter of Rey’s name to his own. “B – _Ren_. It’s Ren.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNING: HUMAN TRAFFICKING. 
> 
> You may have noticed that for the first time, we have two chapters in a row in Ben's POV. This is intentional, since Rey's whereabouts and fate are, as yet, unknown. 
> 
> P.S. I realize this is pretty dark subject matter, but I think the interesting thing about Star Wars is that all the social issues of our time exist analogously in a galazy far, far away: refugees, trafficking, class differences, Ben's almost-uncontrollable urges to murder people (what?)
> 
> P.P.S. Ren, you say? Kylo Ren? 
> 
> P.P.P.S. Your theories are so fun to read! Some of you are way off the mark, some of you are pretty close, and some of you just make me laugh.


	13. Chapter 13

The G-9 Rigger in the deepest bay of the vast, disorganized Arcan IV spaceport looked like any spice trader’s freight ship – lop-sided, flat-topped, and rusty. It looked _slow_. The skin trader must have had much of a head-start on the Falcon; a beauty, Ben’s father ship was _not_ , but she was fast.

This was the ship – it was registered under Jardy’s name. The spaceport’s head of security had been most helpful, turning over his ingress and egress logs, with a little bit of prodding and suggestion.

Still, Ben hesitated, sitting in the cockpit of the Falcon in the bay across from the Rigger. He couldn’t _feel_ her in the ship. He’d expected her Force signature to get stronger and stronger, like a homing signal, the closer he got to her. At the nose of the Falcon, in the cockpit, he was meters away from the other ship. Rey’s fear – or her relief, if she felt him there –  should have been palpable.

_Rey._

No answer. Her signature was as weak and sluggish as it had been when he’d landed on-world. It was just present enough for him to be sure she was caught in the same gravity that he was, but that was all.

 _She could be dying,_ a traitorous voice whispered in his head, _her Force signature nearly snuffed out._ His fingers tingled, and he tightened his grip on the pilot’s arm-rests for a moment.

Just because he couldn’t sense her in the freighter, though, didn’t mean he couldn’t sense the others. There were at least four or five people aboard, their energies concentrated around the cockpit. He doubted they’d welcome him aboard to inspect their wares. Ben swiveled, and reached down, fumbling for the latch to the secret compartment under the co-pilot’s chair. His father’s spare side-arm wasn’t there, and he withdrew his hand, frowning.

Maz had given him a boxed up blaster – perhaps naively unaware of what damage he could do without one – and warned him to keep one hand on his weapon on Arcan IV. Ben went back into the crew quarters and rummaged for the brown box.

He didn’t _need_ a blaster, but part of him wanted it. He’d never killed anyone. If he had to – and some part of him _wanted_ to – he’d rather do it from a distance. Using a blaster would divorce his powers from the killing. A part of him was still afraid to use the Force to end someone’s life. For years, he’d been taught that was a perversion of his powers. His _capacity_ to do something that awful was the very reason he’d been banished to Yavin IV.

There wasn’t a blaster in the box. Instead, there was a dull, worn durasteel cylinder with deep horizontal grooves in it. It felt heavy in Ben’s hand when he picked it up and hefted it to feel its weight.

Maz had given him a lightsaber.

***

The traders – ones Jardy had ostensibly left to guard the ship and its cargo – were too distracted by the lewd jokes they were exchanging and the liquor they were taking swigs of to notice Ben creep aboard the Rigger. He circumvented the cockpit, and slunk to the cargo hold.

Ben had been a large boy, and he was a larger man. The rusty floors of the freighter seemed to protest under his every step. He cursed his big feet and his long legs and his height. Every few strides, he stopped and listened, with both his ears and the Force.

The drunken traders continued to carouse in the cockpit.

The cargo hold was retrofitted with durasteel blast doors. Lackadaisical though the humans on board might have been, Jardy clearly took security seriously. Ben ran his hands over the port, trying to send his energy through it.

_Rey?_

Again, no answer.

He held the hilt of the lightsaber up to the locking mechanism, and pressed the hollow end of the cylinder to the metal. His thumb worried the latch on the underside of the weapon, and then he pressed it forward with his thumb.

The blade ignited, and when it had melted away the lock on the door, Ben could see that it was an icy, clear blue. He held the saber aloft for light as he withdrew it from the ruined blast door and pushed the durasteel panels aside. They groaned in protest as they slid along the floor, but they yielded for him.

By the light of the blue plasma, he could see human feet – a whole row of them. They were bare, dirty, and lined up neatly. Startled, Ben took a step back. He hadn’t sensed a single soul inside the hold, let alone dozens of them.

 _Corpses_? His gut twisted, and he reluctantly took a step forward.

Not corpses – Jardy didn’t trade in dead bodies, after all – but close. The feet belonged to humans – mostly – and they were still very much alive. Their arms were chained behind them to a length of durasteel pipe that ran the length of the hold. Parallel to it was a clear plasteel tube, full of a clear, viscous liquid. Each person was attached via an intravenous needle to the tube. The assembly line of bare feet disappeared into the abyss of the hold beyond the range of his saber’s light.

He couldn’t feel Rey. He couldn’t feel _any_ of them.

Crouching next to the nearest girl – a human, younger than Rey, even, and half-naked – Ben yanked the intravenous drip out of her arm. The girl’s eyelids fluttered, and she moaned, softly. Ben sniffed the syringe. It was odorless, if acrid. Not spice or any other opioid, then.

“Wake up.” Ben shook the girl. “Wake up, now.” He willed her to respond, and found the inside of her head thick and fuzzy. She was drugged, heavily. Her eyelids flickered, and her mouth slackened, but she didn’t wake up.

“Oy!”

Ben jerked around. A Rodian levelled a blaster at him, swaying slightly on his thick, green, reptilian legs. His orbital, dark eyes glistened with liquor, and his first shot hit the ceiling of the cargo hold.

The drugged girl didn’t even flinch.

Ben could have deflected the next bolt with his blade – years of training with a blindfold, a randomized droid, and a training saber ensured that – but he made a split-second decision. He turned away from the Rodian and brought the plasma blade down onto the plasteel tube supplying the intravenous drips.

The liquid hissed as it made contract with the lightsaber, and vaporized. It smelled foul as it burned.

Ben tried to turn back to the advancing Rodian in time to defend himself, but the floor was slippery with the spilled clear liquid. He grunted in surprise and pain as his ankle twisted when he pivoted, and then _roared_ in pain as heat jolted through his hand.

He’d been burned by training sabers and bolts before. The pain of that wasn’t insignificant – otherwise, they weren’t a good teaching tool. This felt like a _hundred_ training bolts. It left a bloody, black, half-cauterized gash on the back of his fingers. Cursing, Ben dropped the lightsaber and curled his hand into his chest.

Too late, he realized his mistake. The weapon Maz had given him rolled away down the cargo hold, and he fell to his knees, scrabbling for it.

The trader advanced, still shooting. A blaster bolt ricocheted off the durasteel wall next to Ben’s head. Another one hit one of the chained skin girls, making a sound like meat being punctured. The girl didn’t even react.

The trader was only a few feet away, and drunk or not, he wouldn’t miss again. Without thinking – or even hoping it would work – Ben reared up onto one knee, pivoted, and flung one arm out, lifting his palm like a shield. He flinched, waiting for impact.

The bolt, humming, stopped in mid-air.

“What the – ” The Rodian took a step back. “What _are_ you?”

Ben breathed heavily through his nose. He knew, in that moment, that the answer was not  _a Jedi._

He didn’t need the saber. The pain gave him a rush of power, power he knew he should disavow. He used it, instead. It was _intoxicating._ He clawed his injured hand into a fist, and dragged the Rodian towards him as he rose to his feet. The creature panicked, his boots sliding on the floor. “No, wait – ”

Gritting his teeth, Ben threw the trader against the durasteel wall of the Rigger. It landed on the floor with a sickening crunch. It was silent for a moment in the cargo hold, and then suddenly, the Force shifted. The girls in the cargo hold were coming out of the haze of the drugs. He was suddenly aware of them within the Force, as if they were pricks of light in the darkness. Each was an individual, each of them felt specific emotions, and none of them were Force sensitives.

_Rey?_

Then, aloud. “Rey?”

It was silent in the cargo hold, the Force deadened. The Rodian groaned, pitifully.

Rey wasn’t here.

Anger settled into Ben’s bones. It made him _powerful._ He stalked over to the Rodian, put his boot on the alien’s throat, and crushed it. He didn’t look away from the trader’s eyes as the life in them dimmed.

***

_Rey. Rey. Rey._

This, she imagined, was what it was like to be underwater. She wouldn’t know, having passed all her years on a dry planet. Her limbs felt heavy, and everything was dark and muffled. If she looked up, there was a watery, shimmering light above her.

She kicked towards it, willing herself upwards, but of course – she couldn’t swim. She sunk deeper, and darker.

 _Rey._ The voice was the only clear thing in the underwater world. It didn’t sound like Ben’s voice always did in her head – it was different, angrier, strained with panic. Darker. But he was the _only_ one who’d ever spoken to her in her head, and despite herself, she still had hope.

 _Ben?_ She expected her lungs to fill with water when she answered, but of course they didn’t. She wasn’t underwater. She was on the dirty floor of a cargo hold, chained up like a slave. No, not like a slave. A slave. She was a slave.

Rey had surfaced, somehow, without realizing it.

“Ben?” This time, his name came out of her mouth, in a cracked whisper. She opened her eyes, with great effort.

Still on the floor of the cargo hold. She closed her eyes again, heart sinking. Something wet plopped onto her eyelid, and stung.

Blinking, Rey shook her head to get the liquid off. She opened her eyes again and maneuvered, painfully, onto her back. The pipe above her was leaking clear viscous fluid onto her hands and hair, and all around her, the other girls were shifting and waking up.

Something else was different, too. Ben’s voice hadn’t been wishful thinking. He was here. She could feel him, feel what he called a Force signature.

He _felt_ different, just as he’d sounded different.  

Rey squirmed against her chafing chains. “Ben!” Her voice was a pathetic squeak. She’d made herself hoarse from screaming, when the traders had come for her. “Ben!”

She reached out for him in her mind, and her reach fell horribly short. He felt very far away, and she felt very weak.

Something rolled leisurely down the center aisle of the cargo hold and stopped, precariously, right in front of her. Rey lifted her head, straining the muscles of her neck to do so, and looked at it. It was a nondescript metal cylinder. Most people would think it a piece of junk.

Rey was not most people. She was a scavenger. Where others saw scrap metal, she saw solutions. She was completely – inexplicably – certain that this cylinder wasn’t junk.

Stretching out her bare foot, Rey strained against the chains, and tried to grab the cylinder with her toes. She came up short, panting. Her body wasn’t quite long enough, and her chain was unyielding.

The Force. She could lift it, like the blue marble.

 _Focus._ This time, Ben’s voice was a memory. He sounded calm, and happy. _You’re thinking too hard._

How had she lifted the sphere of blue glass? Rey tried to remember, her brain still sluggish. Ben had thrown the youngling’s toy at her, and she’d reacted. _See?_ _You didn’t have time to think._

She didn’t have time to think, now. In the Force, Ben seemed to be moving farther and farther away from her. Her limbs felt heavy again, as if she was sinking back underwater. She didn’t have _time_.

The cylinder hit her in the chin, it flew into her chained hand with such force. With her arms above her head, Rey couldn’t look at the tube – couldn’t examine its mechanics or determine its utility in escaping her prisoners.

She fumbled with the tube, turning it over in her awkwardly trussed hand. Her breath came in short, panting spurts, and her chest was tightening up. The water was rising again.

There was a switch. This wasn’t just a cylinder, then. Rey didn’t pause to wonder what the latch did. She pushed it, scrabbling at it a bit with her clenched fingers.

An inch above her face, an electric blue beam hummed to life.

***

Rey scorched the walls of the freighter with the blue blade as she stumbled out of the cargo hold. Her legs were wobbly as she made her way across the bay of the freighter. It was suddenly very loud in her head. All of the girls she’d been in the cargo hold with were waking up, as disoriented and panicked as she was.

And _Ben_ – Ben was the loudest. He was wordless, but the sound of his agony roared in her ears. Rey’s fingers faltered on the strange blue blade. He was _hurt,_ lashing out like a wounded animal _._ “Ben!”

If she’d been in her right mind, she would have known she’d be no use to him in her state. Still, she staggered towards him.

The cockpit was curiously quiet when she stumbled into it, leaning heavily on the side of the ship’s hull. Ben half-turned from the controls, his back hunched over as if he were a monster, too large for the freighter’s confines.

“Rey.” She’d expected him to look at her like he always did – with a half-grin, or solemn tenderness. She’d expected him to fall onto his knees with relief, or pull her into the safety of his arms. She didn’t expect something like horror to cross his face.

She looked away from his face, for a moment. His clothes were streaked with blood. He made a soft, anguished noise, and moved, almost imperceptibly, to block her from going into the cockpit, but he wasn’t fast enough.

In the pilot’s seat was a dead Rodian, his neck cracked into an awful, unnatural angle. The legs of a human were splayed out, lifeless, on the floor, and crumpled against the wall was another trader. All dead.

“Rey.” Ben repeated her name, almost hopelessly. He took a step towards her, raising his bleeding hand, entreatingly.

“What did you do?” Rey knew _her_ Ben. She trusted him, as much as a scavenger trusted anyone. But she didn’t know _this_ man. She instinctively lifted the blue beam of light, putting it between his body and hers, defensively.

His face changed. He moved his hand, flinging a drop of blood out onto her neck, and suddenly, she was falling back into darkness.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This felt very... Shakespearean tragedy. 
> 
> P.S. As usual, your theories and predictions make my day. I'll give you a little hint, without spoiling you: this is a in-verse AU in which the First Order does not exist (don't you think you would have heard about it by now?). So suffice it to say... this may be going in a very different direction than what you're expecting.


	14. Chapter 14

Rey surfaced slowly, this time, and everything felt sharp and clear – almost too much so. She could hear everything – the whirring of engines, the soft purr of a hyperdrive, the rhythmic pounding of water in a refresher – and feel everything with absolute clarity. When she sat up, it was all too much, and she drew her knees into her chest, resting her forehead on them.

Her legs were bare. A hugely ill-fitting shirt pooled around her hips when she drew her legs up. It smelled clean, and foreign. Not like Ben exactly, but… similar. Her clothes were gone. They’d disappeared piecemeal, she remembered.

First, a boot. The human – not Jardy, who was the one in charge, but the other one – had grabbed her foot as she’d tried to crawl out of her AT-AT. They’d been lying in wait there, and, blinded by stupid, _stupid_ tears, she hadn’t bothered to stop and _listen_ before she’d gone inside. She’d kicked off the boot and scrambled to escape, only to get a face-full of sand. The storm was encroaching, still, dying in a sandstorm was better than _this_ – another one of them had gotten purchase on her bare foot, and then on her belt, and then there was a sharp stab of pain, a blunt object, like the butt of a blaster, crashing into the back of her skull.

When she’d woken up, groggy and achy, on the floor of the freighter, in deep space, her belt and satchel were stripped off, and her other boot was gone. Space was cold, and all she’d been left with was her tunic and trousers.

She’d waited, crying silently, disgusted at her own weakness, for one of the traders to come and take off her trousers, and do unspeakable things to her. She’d protected herself for years, and this was what it had come to – a grimy floor and chains. One of the traders had stomped over to her, after a while, and she’d flinched away, kicking weakly. He’d laughed, almost good-naturedly, and jabbed her with another needle – this one, hooked up the plasteel tube above her head.

From that point, all of her memories blurred together. The drug had muffled her senses, both her _usual_ faculties and the _unusual_ abilities Ben had taught her about. Even when she’d surfaced from the dark water, everything had been tilted sideways and grotesquely distorted.

Rey caught her breath, bile rising in her throat, remembering the bizarre angle of the Rodian trader’s neck. That stood out to her, amongst all her fuzzy memories.

It must have been a fever dream, brought on by the serum. She was _almost_ sure. She couldn’t believe what she’d seen – the trader’s mangled bodies, beneath Ben’s feet – and she couldn’t believe that he’d come for her. It defied reason and logic.

Her knees were knocking together, as if she was cold, but she felt very hot. The serum, she realized, her muscles aching as she squeezed her thighs together and wrapped her arms tighter around them. She was withdrawing from the serum.

After a long moment, Rey ventured to open her eyes again, and peer over her knees.

She was in the berth of a spaceship, and for a moment, she thought it was the skin trader’s Rigger. It was about as old and out-dated.

No, this ship different class entirely, and it didn’t smell like sweat and urine. Rey took deep, soothing breaths through her nose, pinching the bridge of it. A freighter, probably even another smuggler’s freighter, but not the Rigger.

Jardy might have sold her. That would explain why she was withdrawing from the serum. No-one wanted to rut on a passed-out skin girl. Rey looked down at her bare legs, stretching them out. She wasn’t wearing anything under the shirt. That made sense, too.

Panicking, Rey rolled out of the bunk and onto the unforgiving durasteel floor. She scrambled to her feet, wobbling like a newborn bantha colt, and bolted for the door. If she was on-world, somewhere, she’d run; if she was in deep space, she’d fight. Anything was better than living as a slave.

Curiously, no one stopped her as she ran down the curving length of the ship’s deck, past smuggling compartments and tech bays.

She stopped short when she reached the cockpit. It was side-mounted – not where she’d expected it –  and transparisteel-domed. Outside the dome was deep space, moving by at blue-violet hyperspeed.

That – the isolation of space, with no possibility of escape – should have frightened Rey. But she _knew_ this cockpit. She’d seen it, in Ben’s memories of the lakes on Endor and the orchards in Corellia and the pod-races on Tattoine. Ben had sat on someone’s lap in the captain’s chair as this freighter descended into the atmospheres of new worlds.

Ben _had_ come for her. It hadn’t been wishful thinking, or a coping mechanism her mind had fashioned from her memories and longings. This was his _father’s_ ship. This was –

“The Millennium Falcon.” Ben spoke from the captain’s chair, without swiveling it around. He was slumped in it, one leg pulled up onto the seat, as he contemplated the stars through the transparisteel dome.

Rey blinked at the back of his head, more confused than startled. There were a hundred questions she needed to ask – chief among them, _how did you find me_ and _are you real?_ – but the first one that came to mind was: “Your father is… Han Solo? The Resistance hero?”

Ben laughed, softly. “No, the smuggler.” He tilted his head back against the seat, looking at the control panels on the ceiling, and she got a unique perspective on his face. He’d scrubbed it clean, so much, in fact, that it was pink and raw. His hair was still damp from the ‘fresher, sticking out around his ears. He looked like a boy again, and she recognized him again. She realized he’d been listening to her thoughts – or rather, her panic – when he said, softly, sounding almost remorseful, “You’re safe on-board.”

Rey eased into the co-pilot’s seat, and brought her legs up into it. She wrapped her arms around herself, in a protective egg, suddenly feeling naked. “I can’t… feel you.” It must have been a side-effect of the serum, she thought, but bit was disconcerting. She hadn’t even been aware of the Force until recently, but now she was fiercely aware of its dormancy.

“I don’t want you to feel me right now.” Ben didn’t look at her.

Rey stared at his profile. His lashes were flickering quickly across the soft skin under his eyes. “Are you doing this? To me?”

“Not _to_ you.” Ben shifted in the captain’s chair. He didn’t offer any other explanation. “What do you remember?” His voice was an uncharacteristically low rumble.

“I remember everything.” That was a lie; everything was blurry and disoriented. But she knew what _he_ was referring to, and she did remember that. She’d seen plenty of violence in her short life, very little of it had been unnecessary. On Jakku, sometimes, it was kill or be killed. She hadn’t forgotten any of it. She wouldn’t forget this. 

Ben exhaled slowly, through his teeth. His eyes were glossy. His gaze traced levers and charts above him. “I never understood what my uncle said, about… about the dark side. About the darkness in me.” His throat bobbed. “I understand now.” He turned his gaze on her, and for a second – whatever he was doing to block her out – he slipped up. She felt his Force signature then, as dark and blazing as it had been on the Rigger, when she thought he’d been hurt. Now she knew he hadn’t been hurt. He’d been _killing_.

“Where are the others?” That hadn’t been what he was expecting to hear. He gave her a wary, fleeting look, one that was so full of shame her heart ached. “You left them.”

“I’m not a hero.”

“You saved _me_.” Rey leaned across the physical gap between them, wondering whether the metaphorical gap was insurmountable. His Force signature was inscrutable again, barely even identifiable. His shoulders were hunched in on themselves as if that would help him hide his nature.

“We’ll be in the Hosnian System within the hour.” Ben changed the subject – or so she thought – and Rey was about to protest that she was fine, save chafed wrists and a sore throat, and trembling muscles, but he continued, dully, “You can get an emergency injection at the medcenter there.”

“What?”

“To prevent pregnancy.” He stared straight ahead.

Rey was about to ask why, when she’d dutifully taken one of the pink pills on Jakku after each time they’d coupled, when she realized what he meant, and what he thought. His back was rigid, like he was bracing himself. “I don’t need an injection.”

Ben’s jaw twitched, imperceptibly, and then suddenly, the muscles of his back relaxed palpably against the captain’s chair. Rey asked, tentatively “Did you think – ”

“I killed them, didn’t I?” Ben cut her off, answering her question with another one. He sounded like he _hated_ himself.

Rey’s breath escaped her in a _whoosh._ Without being able to see into his mind, she understood. He thought he’d been too late, that she was dead or worse, and his anger had been terrible. Now, he knew that he hadn’t been too late, that she’d been aboard the Rigger and unharmed, that killing Jardy’s henchmen accomplished nothing but revenge.

He thought himself a monster. Like a Jedi, he saw the world – morality, rather – in black and white. Rey was more practical. She’d had to be, growing up on a harsh Outer Rim planet. Life wasn’t so precious on Jakku.

But on Jakku, there’d never been anyone to comfort her. She didn’t know how to comfort him now, especially while his powers hunched in on themselves, like a protective shell.

“My parents will know what to do about...” Ben cleared his throat, trailing off. He looked away from the stars, and at her. “And my uncle will know what to do about you.”

Rey felt something twist uncomfortably in her stomach. The way he’d phrased that somehow divorced her fate from his, and she didn’t like that. She pressed her palm to the spot where her chest hurt and felt hollow, under her ribs. She pretended they were laying on top of her AT-AT in the desert, at night, rather than sitting in-opposite in the cockpit, and picked a planet he hadn’t shown her yet. This planet, she knew, had special significance. “Tell me about Yavin IV.”

“It’s humid.” Ben sounded almost wistful. “It’s very hot, when you’re running or using a training saber. We’d spar, and I’d beat you.”

“Not likely.”

He finally smiled, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “And you’d want to go for a swim to cool off. Maybe naked. There are colorful fish in the water. It’s strange to swim with them.” His voice was almost sad, and she had the peculiar feeling that he wasn’t quite being truthful with her. Still, it was a wonderful lie to believe. She closed her eyes and listened to his voice.

“I can’t swim.”

“You’ll learn.”

***

On Hosnian Prime, a med-droid prodded and poked Rey. Ben watched through the transparisteel wall of the quarantine room in the emergency medcenter adjacent to the Republic City spaceport. He felt safe enough behind the transparisteel to drop the roughshod cloaking mechanism he’d improvised on the Falcon. His fingers tingled as the Force trickled past his makeshift dam, and then rushed out.

Rey had been watching the needle take a blood sample from inside the crook of her elbow. Her head jerked up, and she blinked at him. Ben knew she could feel him, then, and probably feel the vestiges of the darkness in his Force signature. She didn’t recoil, either physically or in the Force.

She smiled at him, shyly, her teeth biting into the bruised tenderness of her bottom lip.

Luke Skywalker was nearby. The Jedi Master could feel him now, too, and feel the change in his Force signature. So be it. Ben couldn’t hide it. He didn’t even want to. It was exhausting. He was exhausted of hiding what he was, and what he was capable of. Luke had been  _right_ , all those years.

Ben stepped closer to the viewport, and flattened his hand against the transparisteel, spreading his fingers against it and pressing, hard. He wished he could touch her, _her_ , not the cold transparisteel. He was still standing there, his hand pressed to the translucent wall, when his uncle found him.

“You see.” Ben didn’t look at Skywalker. “She is strong in the Force.”

An immigration droid beeped, respectfully, behind them.

“That won’t be necessary.” Luke addressed the chrome machine, quietly, with a soft flick of his palm. “The girl isn’t staying on-world.” Then, addressing Ben, he added, “She will go with me, to Yavin IV.”

Ben bowed his head over the transparisteel, breath quickening. He half-turned, too angry to face his uncle, afraid that if he did, he would beg not to be sent away, again, from the only home he knew, from the only ones he loved, from _Rey_.  “And where will I go?” _What will I become?_

***

Feeling Ben in Force – _fully_ – felt like coming home. Rey closed her eyes and inhaled, as if she could breathe it in. She hadn’t been aware of just how much he’d been holding back until he’d let it all go. He felt warm, and affectionate, familiar.

And then, the darkness was back, rippling through her consciousness with startling speed.

Rey opened her eyes, confused. There was a man standing in Ben’s place at the transparisteel viewport. He was bearded, and gray, with strange blue eyes and a weathered face. He was studying her, the same way Ben had, when he’d first laid eyes on her. As if she was… a curiosity.

Alarmed, Rey yanked the nutrient IV drip out of her arm. Ben’s anger made no sense. His pain made no sense. They were _together._ She was _safe_. They would go to Yavin IV, like he’d promised. He would teach her to swim, and to use a training saber. They would learn everything about each other, too.

The med-droid beeped, exasperated, as she clambered off the examination table. “I must advise against – ”

Rey ignored it. She tugged the medical gown closer around herself, going over to the transparisteel.

The man in drab robes spoke to her, then, in her head, and she stopped short with a startled cry. Hearing him there was a totally different experience then hearing Ben. Now – perhaps because of their physical intimacy – it felt intimate to have Ben in her head.

This man was a stranger, and he felt strange. _My name is Luke Skywalker._

She knew that name, just as she’d known Han Solo’s name. _I thought you were a myth._

 _I am a man._ Luke Skywalker gave her a thoughtful look through the transparisteel. _And a Jedi._

_***_

Han was looking over the Falcon, pretending to be busy checking it for damage, when Ben stumbled out into the spaceport, wiping his face on his sleeve. When he saw his son, the old smuggler straightened up, hooking his thumbs into his belt.

They stood in awkward silence, broken only by Ben sucking in deep, angry breaths, trying not to cry, trying to be a man in front of his father. He’d never felt particularly close to Han, but suddenly, the prospect of saying goodbye was daunting. He had no idea where he would go, or when he would be back. He only knew he wanted to disappear into the wilderness of the galaxy, unwanted and cast off, first by his parents, and then by his uncle. 

He had run to the spaceport because he couldn’t bear to say goodbye to his mother. Not _again_. The first time had almost destroyed him.

"Uncle Luke..." He trailed off, voice cracking. Han grunted in understanding. For perhaps the first time in Ben's life, he understood. He reached over and slapped his son on the back, gruffly. 

"Come on, kid.” He jerked his head towards the Falcon. “Let’s get out of here, and get into some trouble.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *sobbing, eating ice cream for comfort* 
> 
> P.S. I hate geting all invested in the central relationship of a story, only for it to split the characters up for a long stretch of chapters. So rest assured - I won't do that you. These poor space babies are going to pine, and pine for a long time, but we, the audience, are skipping ahead five years. 
> 
> P.P.S. Luke is the worst, Han is the best.
> 
> P.P.P.S. This was a pretty difficult chapter to structure, because I felt like I didn't have the time to focus both on Ben's guilt and exile, and Rey's reaction to it. But she isn't a heartless asshole, so we will revisit her feelings about the schism later in the story.
> 
> P.P.P.P.S. This author's note is getting really out of hand BUT I am working on a short-one shot in the "Unexpected" universe if you're a fan of that, for Valentine's Day. I'm not sure if I'll publish it attached to the original story, or on it's own, but keep an eye out! I needed something light and fluffy after these two chapters.


	15. Chapter 15

In the course of five years, Ben had wrangled all manner of creatures and hauled all manner of goods aboard the Millennium Falcon – weapons, precious metals, exotic animals.

A _child_ – a child was a first. “What am I going to do with you?”

The youngling blinked at him, solemnly. She was a human, maybe five or six years old, malnourished and filthy. For all that she resembled a feral creature, she seemed perfectly content to be held in Chewbacca’s enormous, furry arms.

The child appeared to be non-verbal. She hadn’t screamed, or cried, either – not when she’d heard the blast doors on the VCX-100 light freighter’s cargo hold open, or heard blaster shots ricochet off the durasteel hull. Not when he’d stopped short on his way out the hatch, arrested by her Force signature. She’d just stared at him, wide-eyed, and somehow, despite her lot in life, trusting.

The others – the ones he’d left in the VCX-100, stranded out on the dusty, desert surface of Geonosis - would be rescued by some light, zippy new piece of the New Republic Starfleet. Not a re-fitted old Imperial ship, but new technology. A well-timed transmission to his mother had ensured that.  

By the time the officers on-board found the huddled children and teenagers in the cargo hold of the freighter – and the corpses of their captors – Ben would be in deep space. He never left anything behind – not even memories. He cleaned them all, methodically, before he left the victims to the capable hands of the New Republic.

He’d taught himself, on remote, Outer Rim planets, how to use Force stealth. The skill was a hallmark of the dark side. Luke Skywalker would have been furious; Ben didn’t care. Then, he learned how to make people forget their own memories, and replace them with something bland and comfortable. He’d had to practice _that_ skill on Han – which had gone unappreciated, but at least it had been amusing – before he was ready.

He’d wiped this youngling’s memory, too, even though he’d had made the rash decision to take her with him. He had no reason to fear that she had seen his face, or felt his Force signature, and that she would tell her would-be rescuers. She was coming with him, for better or for worse. He’d used the simple but effective power of suggestion to convince her she’d forgotten everything about his assault on the VCX-100. He didn’t know what she’d seen or experienced at the hands of the skin trader he’d just killed, and he’d rather she not grow up knowing, either.

She’d resisted him, a little, when’d he’d taken those memories from her. Her stubbornness and strength had surprised him. Now, Ben prodded gently at her mind again. _What is your name?_

 _No name._ She didn’t respond intentionally so much as _think_ about the answer.

He tried again. _Where are your parents?_

_No parents._

The youngling was an orphan, then – and far too young to be a skin girl, except, perhaps, for clients with extreme and perverse tastes. There was something simultaneously wise and naïve about her. She’d been starved, abandoned on a desert planet, and taken captive by monsters. That, and she was touched by the Force.

Like _Rey_. Ben looked at the girl, uneasily. He’d spent five years trying to forget the scavenger girl from Jakku. No amount of wheedling could convince him to bet on the Jakku pod-races. On every impoverished planet they landed on, underfed, dusty girls smiled and him, and he flinched. If Ben was lucky enough to intercept transmissions from Yavin IV, he deleted them, point-blank. If Han insisted on watching the flickering blue holograms, he stalked out of the tech-bay.

Life aboard the Millennium Falcon was distracting. Han was a busy man. He was to and fro doing business – questionable business – and, every few months, he rendezvoused with Leia Organa’s Senate shuttle, or touched down on Hosnian Prime, to pretend to be a dutiful husband.

But eventually, pod-races and smuggling and drinking hadn’t been quite enough. There was an itch under Ben's fingernails, and it wasn’t just because he wasn’t using the Force.

Han was a smuggler. He knew better than to ask questions he didn’t want the answers to. He never asked questions about where his son slipped off to some nights. He didn’t ask questions when Ben hurtled into whatever cantina he’d been bargaining in and insisted that they had to get off-world _now_ , and he didn’t ask questions when there were bloody clothes in the sonic washer. He didn’t ask questions when Ben took the Falcon out, alone, while Han was with Leia, and brought it back with blaster burns on its sides.

Now, though, Han asked a question, coming into the crew quarters and cocking a brow. ““Where did you find _that_? Or have you been busier than I thought? I guess we were around these parts a couple years ago –”

Chewie moaned plaintively, and even though he didn’t speak Shyriiwook, Ben knew he was saying _as if._

“She has the Force.” Ben didn’t bother explaining.

“And you found her… using the Force.” Han deadpanned.

“That’s not how the Force works.” Ben gave him a look. “I found her in the cargo hold of a VCX-100. Get us off-world, will you?”

To his credit, Han, didn’t ask any more questions.

***

In deep space, Han, ever unflappable, leaned back in the captain’s chair. “Where to? Or did you not plan that far ahead?”

Ben looked at the youngling, fast asleep across Chewie’s belly. The Wookie gave him a baleful look. The Falcon was no place for a child – he’d heard that from his mother, a million times, during his youth. He knew where this particular child belonged, but he couldn’t bring himself to name the small, tropical moon.

Chewie made an impatient noise. Ben ground out a Huttese obscenity between his teeth, and then strode between the two chairs and punched in coordinates.

“Yavin IV?”

“I don’t want to see him.” Ben scowled at the stars through the viewport. “You can take her on-world.”

Han made a soft, huffing noise. “You’re still his nephew, kid.”

“I don’t think that means anything to him.” Ben said, stiffly.

“Do you not want to see him, or do you not want to see _her_?”

Ben knew he was flushing, but he pretended that he didn’t know who Han was talking about. He pretended he didn’t still think of her when other girls flirted with in smuggler’s bars, or when he was alone and aroused in his bunk, having made an excuse not to bring those girls back to the Falcon. “Who?”

Han rolled his eyes, took his folded leg off of the control panel with a grunt, and leaned forward to change the coordinates.

“Naboo?” Ben’s head snapped up. His mother was on Naboo. Han might not ask questions, but Leia _absolutely_ did, and he didn’t want to explain how he’d come across the Force-sensitive child. She didn’t know that he was using the Force on his own, unsupervised, in a way that was completely contrary to what Luke had taught him.

“Luke’s sending an envoy to the new seat of the Senate.” Han didn’t meet his eyes. “He’s not on Yavin IV.”

***

The capital of the New Republic had rotated twice in Ben’s lifetime – first, it had been on Chandrila, and then on Hosnian Prime. Naboo would be its third seat, far less urban and diverse than the first two. It was an historic, lush planet.

The Falcon was coming down gently into the planet’s atmosphere when Ben felt it. It was different, after five years – stronger, cleaner, more contained – but unmistakable. He turned and snarled at his father, “Did you know?”

“What?”

Ben’s stomach knotted up. His voice hadn’t cracked in years, but it did now, embarrassingly. “ _She’s_ here.”

Han feigned innocence for a moment, and then slumped. “How did you – the kriffing _Force_. Kid, I was going to tell you.”

“When?” Ben’s fingers turned white, he was gripping the arms of the co-pilot’s chair so hard. Rey’s force signature was growing stronger as they settled through the clouds and into the sunlight. “When were you going to tell me?”

“All right, I wasn’t going to tell you.” Han scowled. “I didn’t think you’d – I thought that _wasn’t how the Force worked._ ”

“What is she doing here?” She was supposed to be on Yavin IV, studying under his uncle. That was, after all, why they’d been separated, after he’d stupidly confessed his love to his uncle, swept away by his juvenile feelings. Jedi didn’t fall in love, and they didn’t engage in politicking.

“Your mother – ” Han began. Ben hissed through his teeth, feeling his mother’s Force signature, now. “– suggested her. To be the Senate envoy.”

They touched down on the spaceport, and Ben suddenly wondered if Rey could feel him, in the Force. He wondered if he felt different to her, now, after five years of suppressing his powers and using them only in the dead of the night to do dark deeds he deemed necessary.

If she could feel him in the Force, and he didn’t go to her, she’d think him a coward. Ben swore a hundred times over in his head. He swore out loud a few times, too, at his father.

He was a great many things, but not a coward.

***

_Still._

Rey inhaled, held the air in her lunges, and exhaled. She needed to be still, and present.

Naboo was beautiful, from what little she’d seen of it. She’d pressed her nose up to the viewport of the New Republic shuttle and gaped at it like a little girl. It was green, and covered with lakes and waterfalls. It looked like Endor, she thought, even though she’d never seen that planet with her own eyes.

Rey wanted to leave this dim conference room in the old royal palace and wander the symmetrical, golden-bricked streets of the capital. She wanted to fly low over the lakes and try all of the different fruits and examine the plethora of pink and white flowers. She was sick of security briefings and policy meetings. The spice trade was getting out of hand. Some vigilante was killing off skin traders. There were separatists in the Outer Rim. The starfleet was stretched too thin.

 _Still._ She needed to sit still.

Meditation was not Rey’s strong suit. She was digging her nails into the palms of her hands. With effort, she relaxed her fingers and splayed them out on the table in front of her.

Yavin IV was a small moon, both physically and metaphorically. It wasn’t particularly isolated, but on it, Rey felt isolated. She was an oddity, a late arrival. She’d come to Skywalker fully formed, rather than as a baby or a youngling. Most of her peers were the children of diplomats or merchants. Some weren’t – some were poor, the children of moisture farmers or slaves. She wasn’t the only orphan, but the other orphans had known no life but life on Yavin IV. The life of a Jedi padawan.

Rey had known a harsh scavenger’s life, and, in a strange, second-hand way, known about Ben Solo’s life on other planets. There was an inexplicable longing in her to _go_ to those other planets and see them with her own eyes. She never had. Luke occasionally went on diplomatic missions, and chose a lucky padawan to accompany him. He’d never chosen her, and she’d taken to making scratch marks on the stone wall of her bedroom in the dormitory to count the days on Yavin IV. Eighteen-hundred and twenty-one days.

There was the other matter – the secret one – that made her feel eons older and completely different from the other students. They were, in many ways, innocents. She wasn’t an innocent. She'd seen the worst of the galaxy, and the best of it. She’d done something the Jedi were forbidden to do, and she’d liked it. Worse, she remembered it, despite her best effort to forget it and focus on her future. She thought about it sometimes, when she was alone. Luke sometimes looked at her as if he knew, but if she suspected, he didn’t say anything.

Now, Luke was giving her an odd look, and she realized her mind had been wandering. She focused again, and started to recite the Code in her head. She believed the Code – not with the fervency of a priest, but in a practical sense. She understood that its tenants brought her closer to the Force. The Force was _greater_ than her small passions and regrets. _There is no passion, there is serenity._

Something changed in the Force around her. The best way Rey could have described it was as if a bantha – obtrusive and huge – was draped in a sheet and wandering around the Senate building. No one else seemed to realize it was a bantha under the sheet, somehow, or even notice that there was this _thing_ stumbling around.

Luke was sitting perfectly still. His Force signature didn’t even ripple in recognition.

“Do you feel that?” She asked him.

Luke Skywalker’s gray, bushy brows creased. “Feel what?”

The heavy, ceremonial door to the conference room creaked open. A middle-aged, grinning man strode through the doors, and for the first time in months, Rey saw Luke truly smile. “My old friend.”

“Don’t you _old friend_ me.” The man laughed. “I’m not old.”

A huge, hairy creature, almost the height of two men – a Wookie, she guessed – moaned good-naturedly, and Rey understood him to mean _yes, you are._ He was holding a sleeping human child in his huge arms. He had fearsome teeth and small, glittering eyes that belied the gentleness with which he cradled her.

The strangeness in the Force was more pronounced, now. No one else seemed to feel it. Puzzled, Rey looked past the man, and the Wookie, and the child, and saw Ben Solo.

He hesitated in the doorway, his throat bobbing. He didn’t look at anything but her. He looked at her like he was comparing her to his memories. She wondered how precise those memories had been. Hers didn’t quite do him justice, now that she saw him.

Without thinking, Rey spoke to him in her mind. _Your hair is longer._

A hundred things seemed to have changed about Ben, but that was what she noticed first. His hair had been cropped around his ears, when he’d been Luke’s student. Now it was brushing his shoulders, unkempt. Then, she noticed other things. He seemed almost taller, if that was possible, and broader. The lankiness and gangliness of his youth were gone, and his skin had lost some of its pallor. It was marked with sun-spots and scars, now.

Still, Rey would have known him by sight anywhere. She’d memorized those angular features and those strange, burning eyes.  Even so, she didn’t recognize his Force signature. He was the strange cloaked thing she’d felt, that no one else seemed to notice.

“It covers my ears.” Ben spoke out loud, rather than in her mind, and something was lost. Even after five years, she felt a certain intimacy with him. She could speak silently to the other students, and to Luke, but it felt strange to have them in her head. They didn’t really know her – all of what made her _her_. She’d reached out to Ben, with the Force, by habit, and by instinct, and because a part of her longed to feel that intimacy again.

He kept her shut out, like she was a stranger. Rey swallowed, hard. If he refused to let her in his head, then, very well, she’d speak aloud. They would be strangers, as they should be, after all this time, and after all her training. 

Still, she couldn’t quite resist – “I always liked your ears.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And we begin the second story-arc! 
> 
> P.S. I am publishing a Valentine's Day one-shot follow-up to Unexpected on Tuesday and I am super, super pumped about it! It was so fun to write something lighter after all this. It's entitled Strangers, and I would love if you'd check it out.


	16. Chapter 16

The youngling in the Wookie’s arms was fascinated with Ben. She stared at him with unadulterated interest once she woke up, her eyes enormous.

Rey, for her part, couldn’t stare. She sat, straight as a ramrod, looking at the intricate gilding on the wall behind his left shoulder. Luke and the human named Han were speaking in low voices, but she hardly heard them. She watched, from the corner of her eyes, as Ben folded and refolded his limbs in a chair. He wasn’t looking at her, either.

The child looked expectantly at Ben, all the sudden, her head cocking. Ben’s jaw twitched, and he tilted his head back, looking at the ceiling. The youngling’s face scrunched up, then, as if she was upset. It was a strange, silent exchange, and it took Rey a moment to realize what its nature was.

The youngling was trying to speak to him in the Force. She wasn’t proficient, at all, but she knew how to communicate in rough terms and images, using her innate powers. She was upset that he was ignoring her, and she was trying to get his attention.

Now, Rey couldn’t resist. She narrowed her eyes at Ben.

For a moment, he looked defiant, and then his shoulders slumped. He glanced at the little girl, and something transpired between them. The youngling beamed, wriggling her hand excitedly.

Seemingly despite himself, Ben smiled. His Force signature warmed and moved, suddenly, under the dull, strange cloak he’d clothed it in. His smile faded as Rey caught his eye again, and then it was as if the warmth had gone out of the room, leaving a faintly buzzing absence.

***

When Rey took the youngling from the Wookie, she smelled like fuel and animal hair and sweat. She was slight, underfed and underweight. She looped her arms around Rey’s neck, trustingly, and asked, very plainly, though not in so many words, _can you talk to me, too?_

 _Yes._ Rey shifted her weight. _Did he show you that?_

 _Yes._ Then – _kind. He is kind._

 _Why?_ Rey had been fighting tooth and nail to hide her curiosity about Ben. She’d been curious about him, five years ago, when she’d never met a boy before. She’d been curious about his body and his mind and his strange abilities. She flushed to remember that. Now, she was curious about the man he’d become. She was terrified Luke would sense it or see it, but she couldn’t resist asking. _Why is he kind?_

_He saved me from the bad men._

Rey stiffened, an uncomfortable memory trickling down her spine from the back of her consciousness – a memory of bad men, and blood, and being saved. _What bad men?_

_The bad men took me._

Rey looked, warily at Ben. He’d stood, along with his father, and was lingering by the door, as if he might bolt any moment. As if she _terrified_ him.

She tipped her head forward, pressed it to the little girl’s grimy forelock, and looked gently into her memories.

A ship – old, battered, and familiar. The Millennium Falcon. Ben, crouching in front of her, his exposed Force signature a warm, low purr. It comforted the youngling, the way the heartbeat of a familiar friend does. Rey pushed farther back. A dirty cargo hold, and a rusty durasteel chain. A red, sweaty face, teeth bared. Her hair being yanked. Blood. A howl of pain, bright light, and then Ben’s face. And then – _nothing_. Nothing before that.

Rey drew away, confused. The youngling nestled into her chest, oblivious and un-remembering.

***

Something brushed the side of Rey’s arm, just above her elbow, as she followed her master out of the room. Luke was walking step-for-step with Han – Ben’s father, she surmised, judging by their equally crooked noses and off-centered chins. She barely even recognized the tingle on her bare skin as human contact until she looked down and saw Ben move the backs of three of his long fingers down the length of her bicep that was exposed between her tunic and her armguard, towards the sharp point of her elbow.

She wondered, for a dizzying moment, if he would cup her elbow, pull her towards him. He didn’t. His fingers met with that bony angle and the folds of rough, beige fabric, and then he pulled them away. He’d gotten her attention, and apparently, that had been his purpose. He looked at her, reluctantly, working his full lower lip between his teeth as if he couldn’t quite find the words. Then, she heard it. _I have something for you._ _Come find me. Tonight._

His voice in her head was so utterly familiar. It made her chest ache. She was half-tempted to stick her chin up and ignore him. He’d ignored _her._

_How will I find you?_

Ben gave her an unsettling look, the first one that betrayed their private exchange. Otherwise, his face had remained perfectly impassive. She was reminded of the boy who’d taught her to lift things with her mind and trick people into doing what she want. He’d taken such pride in her. _You know how._

***

“You are unsettled.” Luke sounded anything but unsettled as he glided down the cavernous corridor of the old palace. His Force signature was as smooth and un-rippled as a sheet of glass. Would that hers could be, too. She knew it wasn’t immune to the tremors in her lower belly and knees.

Rey knew it was no use lying. “Yes.”

She expected a rebuke, and hung her head as she trotted after him towards the infirmary. The expected reprimand – _there is no emotion, there is peace_ – never came.

“You have overcome so much.” Luke said, finally, when they’d passed the youngling off to med-droids.

Rey glanced at him out of the corner of her eye. “Master?”

“You know what it’s like to be hungry, and afraid, and alone. The others don’t.” He acknowledged what set her apart from her peers. “And you have overcome all of that. But the greater struggle is overcoming your own self.”

Rey swallowed, hard. A question burned the tip of her tongue, one she dared not ask – _can you?_

***

When Rey mediated that night, she didn’t try to center herself and make herself empty, like a vessel for the Force. She reached out, feeling her way through the winding hallways and courtyards, until she felt him. He felt familiar and alive, not cloaked and dull, like he’d been before.

Ben wanted her to find him, and he was making himself known.

He was in the gardens on the lowest terrace of the royal palace, leaning against the golden-stone wall that separated the lush plants from a dizzying waterfall. His head tilted back as she approached, and the cool night breeze ruffled through his hair. His deep exhale joined with the softly whistling wind.

“This is my ancestral home.” He told her, without turning around, and she remembered that he didn’t need to, to know she was there. “My maternal grandmother was the last Queen of Naboo.”

“You never showed me this world.” Rey told him. At that, Ben turned, hunching over his shoulder, to look at her. “In your mind. It’s beautiful. I would’ve liked to see it.”

“Maybe I thought I’d bring you here one day and you could see it with your own eyes.” He turned away again.

“I haven’t seen much of the galaxy.” She pressed up against the wall, bracing her elbows against it, and looked sidelong at him. “But you have.”

“And I still say Jakku is still the most beautiful planet.” He deadpanned.

Rey laughed, despite herself, awkwardly. “Have you… have you been there? Since…”

“I had no reason to.” Ben finally looked away from the steady plummet of white water and leveled his burning eyes at her. He pushed his weight off of the wall, and suddenly, he was towering over her. He took her hand in both of his, dwarfing it. His palms were rougher, more calloused now. They didn’t feel like the hands of a nice Inner Rim boy, now. She supposed that wasn’t what he was, anymore.

She wasn’t an Outer Rim girl, anymore, either. She was a Jedi padawan. Rey tried to yank her hand away, from his, and he stopped her, gripping her wrists tightly. “Ben – ”

Something round and cool pressed into her palm. He folded her fingers around it, very carefully, as if he had given her something very fragile and was afraid she’d drop it. Then, almost respectfully, he put her hand level with her breastbone and let go of it.

“This is what you wanted to give me?” Rey opened her fingers. “A marble?”

“Don’t you remember it?”

Rey felt her face go hot. She remembered it. It was the first thing she’d levitated using the Force. But moreso, she remembered him tucking it away in his pocket. She remembered him playing with it, lying naked on the floor of her AT-AT on his back. The rough blanket had chafed his skin and sex had flushed it. “Yes. Yes, I remember.”

She almost threw the marble over the wall and into the waters, but she tucked it into her pocket, instead. It felt warm there, from being in his hand. She steadied herself, and crossed her arms over her chest. He was looking at her with naked emotion on his face, and she started to explain – she couldn’t, he knew that, she _shouldn’t_. “Ben, I…”

“Your parents are dead.”

That arrested all of her excuses. “What?”

“Your father died during the rebellion on Akiva. He was caught between the New Republic Starfleet and an Imperial splinter group, though it isn’t clear which he pledged allegiance to. Perhaps neither.” He said it as if he’d been living with the knowledge for a long time, waiting to tell her. “Your mother died on one of Kessel’s moons, a few months later. She was using ryll spice. It’s a hallucinogenic. It was an accident.”

Rey’s throat constricted. She felt her eyes prick, but her stomach felt oddly hollow. She didn’t feel anything remotely resembling shock. Part of her had known, had hoped they were dead. That was better, somehow, then being forgotten. “Why are you telling me this?

“I know there is a part of you that’s always wondered if they had come back for you, and found you gone.” Ben gave her a long look, and then turned back to falling water. His shoulders hunched in on themselves, protectively. “Now you know. You don’t have to feel… guilty. You’re free.”

Rey swallowed, over and over, as if that would quell the emotion rising in her throat. He was right, of course. She had felt guilt, misplaced, irrational guilt, as if she’d betrayed them by leaving Jakku. She’d betrayed her sense of hope.

Now, she wondered if there had been _someone_ out there, waiting for her, longing for her, nonetheless. Not her parents, but someone else. “Why did you…”

“I promised I would.” Ben cut her off.

“You knew you’d see me again.” She whispered. She didn’t ask him how long it had taken him to track down the parents of a girl with no name and nothing special about her. She was afraid of the answer – it would betray his devotion.

“I hoped I would.” He ran a hand over his hair. “And at the same time, I hoped I wouldn’t.”

Rey regarded him for a moment. She needed to cry – she felt the tears gathering behind her eyes – but she couldn’t bring herself to cry, standing in front of him. It was too vulnerable, and she was still a girl from Jakku.

Impulsively, she stepped into his chest, gripped his shirt, and cried into it. Ben stiffened under her hands, for a moment, and then she was vaguely aware of his hands smoothing down her hair and making a half-moon at the base of her neck.

She didn’t cry for very long. She didn’t have many tears to shed over her parents. She cried from relief as much as grief, and when she lifted her head, Ben settled his hands over hers, keeping her palms flat on his chest. He leaned towards her, incrementally, his breath hot on her neck, and she understood, with perfect clarity, that he was going to kiss her. Perhaps he wanted to do it comfort her, or for some nostalgic reason.

She didn’t let him. An uneasy feeling had been nagging her all day, ever since she’d glimpsed the little girl’s memories. They were cut off, wiped clean, and no one else would understand them. No one but her. She understood them because she _shared_ them.

“You’re the one who’s been killing the skin traders.” Ben’s head rose a fraction of an inch, and he stopped short of kissing her. His mouth pressed into a straight line. He didn’t deny it, so Rey went on. “I heard rumors, but I didn’t know it was you until I – it _is_ you, isn’t it?”

Ben looked at her, remorselessly, and Rey’s stomach clenched. She backed away, instinctively. His Force signature blossomed, dark and burning hot, rather than warm and purring.

“The skin trader who took you,” He told her, bluntly, just before she started to run away. “I killed him first.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In which Ben is hopelessly devoted to Rey, but he shows it in kind of morbid way.


	17. Chapter 17

Shii-Cho was the first form Ben had learned as Luke’s student, and it was, appropriately, called Form I. He watched Rey practice it now, yanking the leaves off of a nearby tree branch with an outstretched hand and a furrowed brow. It was a defensive form – the bedrock of Jedi lightsaber combat. The first step was always to strip the enemy of its weapon before they were in striking range. Next, huge, sweeping swirls, to keep many enemies at bay. Rey’s control over the training saber was absolutely precise, even in this expansive movement.

Then, Form II – Makashi.  For this one, a tree wouldn’t suffice. Ben stepped out from the shadows and into the courtyard. “You need a sparring partner.”

Rey spun around, her training saber leveled at his throat. When she realized who had crept up on her – and how, by hiding his Force signature – she didn’t lower it. “I _have_ a sparring partner.”

“A training droid?” Ben ducked when she swung, almost playfully, at him.

“A human.” He backed her into the corner of the courtyard; she retreated, even though she was the one who was armed.

“What’s his name?”

“Oren.” She swung, again, this time, _not_ playfully, as he advanced on her.

“ _Oren_.” Ben sneered. He flicked his hand at her knees, and they locked, suddenly.

Rey took a moment to master herself, and then narrowed her eyes at him. “Do you always fight dirty?”

“Fighting isn’t an academic exercise.” Ben mocked her. He knew she was remembering what he’d told her last night. He wondered if she wanted to ask how he killed the traders – with his hands, with the Force, a quick brutal snap of the neck, or something more prolonged. She was curious. He could feel it. It made him preen, for some reason. “And I don’t need a _training_ saber. But –” He held out his hand, abruptly, and said, “Let’s revisit Form I.” Her saber quivered in her hand, and then flew to his.

“Give it back.” She hissed, face pinking from more than just exertion.

“Tell me.” Ben asked, backing away and spinning the training weapon defensively. She advanced on him, breaking his hold on her knees, and he knew he was tempting her temper. He meant to. It would kill him, a little, to see her passion and fire made peaceful and serene. She’d been so _wild_ in his memories. “Is _Oren_ more than a sparring partner?”

“He’s nothing more than a sparring partner.” He’d expected her to rely on the Force, but she didn’t. She was smart enough to take him off-guard. Her physical proximity and up-tilted chin distracted him, and he knew it. She used it to her advantage, yanking the training saber from his grip. There was unexpected vitriol in her voice. “I’ll _never_ have more than a sparring partner.”

“You chose this life.” He sucked in his gut and dodged as she swiped quickly at him, at close range – Form IV, Ataru. “And I chose mine.”

Ben knew the training saber would burn him, as he crowded her, walking right into her next slashing strike. She hadn’t expected that – hadn’t expected his willingness to suffer a burn – and she didn’t get out of the way in time. He wrapped his hand around the hilt and tried to pull it from her. She fought back, her little fingers scrabbling against his.

When he’d gotten the plain, low-powered saber out of her hands, Ben switched it off, breathing heavily. He’d intended to signal a truce, but as he stood there, she attacked him again, this time with her fists. She slapped at his chest, ineffectually, and he tried to dodge. He didn’t try to fight back. Training sabers were fair game – they were both Force sensitive. He wasn’t willing to overpower her physically, for some reason.

“You gave me no choice!” Rey had no such compunctions. She advanced, shoving him. “You left without even saying goodbye. Where else was I supposed to go? Back to Jakku?” She stopped short, breathing hard, her eyes shining, and then suddenly, she wiped her face on her sleeve. He wondered whether she was wiping off tears, or just sweat. When she lowered her arm, her face was fierce again. “I would have chosen you, if you’d given me the choice.”

They stood there, staring at each other, and then a ripple passed them. Rey reacted, eyes shutting briefly with shame. Ben looked over her shoulder, aware of who he would see.

Luke Skywalker gave him an apprising look. “Nephew.”

“Uncle.”

“Master.” Rey didn’t turn around. Ben was acutely aware of how close they were standing, and what it looked like they were doing. He wondered if that was what Luke perceived, or if he had seen Rey attack. He would be disappointed, either way. “We were sparring – ”

“And what Form was that, exactly?”

So he had seen.

Rey gave Ben a look that burned with something – hatred, or maybe, it’s close cousin, repressed lust – and then turned to face the Jedi Master. When she did, her face was serene. “I – ”

“I provoked her, Uncle.” Ben interjected. It was the first time he’d addressed Skywalker. He’d studiously ignored him when he and Han had delivered the youngling the day before. It was fairly easy to do, with someone as distracting as Rey in the room.

Luke’s eyes flickered between them, and then settled on Rey. “You have a briefing in an hour. You would do well to meditate in the interim.” He cocked his head at her, meaningfully.

“Yes, Master.” Rey sounded almost resentful; it startled Ben. He’d expected her to play the part of the dutiful apprentice. He watched her walk away, ducking her head ever so slightly as she passed his uncle. He wondered whether she really would meditate, back in her rooms, or whether she would cry, instead, or throw things against the walls, in forbidden rage.

 “Ben.” Luke said his name, very softly, as he started to walk away. “Where are you going?”

“To meditate.” He answered, sarcastically. Luke almost laughed. His face twitched, to Ben’s surprise.

“Walk with me.”

***

They walked aimlessly, silently, for a few minutes, before Luke spoke. ““You can hide yourself from me in the Force.” Ben didn’t deny it. Rey had recognized him, under his Force stealth, right away. Luke would eventually, too. “But Rey cannot. Her anger makes her vulnerable.” Ben didn’t respond. He’d _intended_ to provoke her anger and emotion – last night, and that morning –  to make her vulnerable. He barely recognized her, as stoic, impenetrable Jedi apprentice. Somehow, the conversation shifted back to swordsmanship. “You could have bested her.”

“I’ve outgrown training sabers.”

“You’d outgrown them already when you left me. You were my greatest student.” Ben looked at his uncle, sharply. Luke didn’t blink. “And so my greatest failure.”

“The failure is mine.” Ben said, impassively. It was still somehow a habit to speak in emotionless, hushed tones to the Jedi Master.

“No.” Luke shook his head. “There was so much darkness in you. Passion. I foresaw it, and as you grew up, I _saw_ it. But I thought that I could form you in my own image. I thought that you were more like me than you were like my father. It was hubris.” They were silent for a few more paces – Ben, wondering why Luke was speaking to him in this way – when Luke began to speak again. This time, he didn’t sound regretful. He sounded as if he were issuing an edict, or a warning. “I will _not_ fail Rey.”

***

“Luke is right.” Han told him, not gently, but matter-of-factly. “You were never supposed to be a Jedi.”

“Because I had too much Vader in me?” Ben scoffed, remembering something he’d heard whispered throughout his youth, like it was a shameful secret whose grandson he was. He’d found his father in the hanger – the only place he was comfortable on a wealthy planet like Naboo – with Chewie, and was watching them scrub grime off of the Falcon’s dorsal side.

“No, because you had too much _me_ in you.” Han grinned, and then leaned in conspiratorially. “Speaking of which – did you make your move?”

“The only move I made was sun djem.”

“Basic, please.” Han huffed.

“Disarming slash.” Ben answered, off-handedly.

Han groaned. “Beating up a girl is not the way to her heart.”

“She beat _me_ up.” Ben muttered. He wondered, privately, how father would react if he knew Ben had divulged to Rey that he’d killed Jardy and his contemporaries in cold blood. He doubted that was the way to her heart, either, but once she’d asked him, point blank, whether he was the shadowy killer, he’d felt compelled to tell her. He’d wanted her to know that he did it for _her_ , out of a twisted sense of loyalty. He wasn’t a monster.

“I knew I liked her.” Han grinned at his first mate. Chewie made a soft noise of approval, and passed Ben a greasy rag. He gestured with a huge, furry paw, to the tech bay. Ben mumbled his assent and slung the dirty rag over his shoulder. “Kid.”

“What?”

“I don’t have the Force, but I saw the way that girl was looking at you.” Han cocked his head, leaning on the side of his spaceship. “Maybe she isn’t supposed to be a Jedi, either.”

***

The Chairman of the Council for the Common Defense - Across the assembly hall, a woman was watching her. The woman’s eyes were dark and careful – familiar, somehow. She was a compact and elegant, and a Senator. Rey had no reason to recognize her. She’d never revisited Hosnian Prime, where the Senate had sat for years. She didn’t hob-nob with people who had money and influence – or anyone at all, for that matter.

Still, the woman seemed to recognize her. She watched her, not even making a secret of it. For some reason, Rey flushed and looked down at her feet. She felt too short and young for her chair in the Senate – a less grand one, pushed to the side, but still. She didn’t belong here, amongst the educated, worldly Senators.

“Chief of the Senate Leia Organa will second the motion.” Somehow, amongst all the ruffling papers, something had happened. Rey blinked as the woman stood and moved, smoothly as water to the center of the floor. Standing there, she looked even more diminutive. Her voice was surprisingly deep and gravelly when she began to address the room.

As she addressed the Senate, the Force emanated very gently from her, and Rey found herself captivated, nodding along. She wasn’t sure if the Chief of the Senate was doing it consciously – exerting very subtle influence through the Force to command the room’s attention. Her Force signature felt warm, and hummed lightly. It was familiar, too. Almost like –

Rey gripped the edge of the table in front of her, as the woman looked directly at her. She had the sinking feeling the woman had sensed her surprise.

Ben’s mother. This was Ben’s mother.

***

When the committee adjourned, Rey didn’t wait to see if Leia Organa would cross the room and speak to her. She ran to the hanger in the dusk.

The Millennium Falcon was easy to find. It was modest Corellian model – well-engineered and built to last, which was why it looked a bit shabby next to all of the Senatorial shuttles. She pressed the release on the boarding ramp, tapping her foot, anxiously.

The Wookie cut her off with a plaintive noise. Unsure if he understood Basic – but surely he did, if he was Han Solo’s first mate? – she addressed him. “I’m looking for Ben.”

“Chewie.” Ben’s voice bounced off the durasteel walls. “Let her on board. And get the hell out of here.”

The Wookie made a noise in response. Rey could somehow tell was he was trying to sound disgruntled, but that he was secretly pleased. He let her pass, in an almost gentlemanly way.

They were alone, then. Rey moved cautiously into the belly of the light freighter. “Ben?”

A greasy rag almost hit her head. She ducked just in time, and then turned, and scowled.

“You’re getting lazy.” Ben told her, coming around the corner.

“You’re getting better at sneaking up on me.” Rey sniffed. “How did you learn that, anyways? Force stealth?”

“Holochron.” Ben didn’t elaborate whether it was a Sith holochron he’d used, or a Jedi holochron. She almost didn’t want to know. He gestured with his own rag towards the expose guts of a hyper drive. Tools were scattered on the floor around it, and he squatted amongst them. “Still good at fixing junk?”

“I came to tell you to leave me alone.”

Ben straightened up, slowly, turning. “You found me to tell me to leave _you_ alone?”

Rey felt her cheeks heat. “I meditated – ”

Ben nodded, sagely and savagely. “Ah, yes. And now you see the error of your ways.”

“I want you to leave me alone.” Rey snapped. She stopped herself from going on – stopped herself from becoming angry – and took a deep, shuddering breath. “Master Luke… if he doubts me, he’ll chose one of the others to be his envoy.” Rey couldn’t keep her wanderlust from her voice. It was pervasive in her life, and she knew Ben – the son of a wanderer and a smuggler – understood it on an elemental level. He, unlike the other padawans, understand her longing. “This is my _chance_ to see something of the galaxy. I don’t want to go back to Yavin IV. So please. Leave me be.”

Ben turned back to the hyperdrive for a moment, fiddling with it uselessly. His voice was gruff when he addressed her over his shoulder. “As soon as I fix this piece of junk, and as soon as my parents commence their inevitable screaming match, I’ll leave you be." Rey watched him work, and for some reason, was glad he wasn’t anyood with parts and mechanics. He didn’t turn back to face her, his shoulders hunched over the hull of the ship. He cursed softly into the metal belly, and dropped a wrench with a clang. "Kriffing hell. No. No, I won't leave you be."

"What?"

Ben rose up off the floor and rounded on her, planting his hands on his hips and looking, for a moment, dizzyingly like his war-hero father. "You still want me."

"I don't." Rey choked out, suddenly aware that he was in her mind, and she hadn't even sensed him there before it was too late. 

"Then why are you afraid?" He advanced on her, again, and now she wished she had a training saber. 

"I'm _not_ afraid."

"You can't hide from me." Ben told her, softly, as he backed her closer to the wall. His eyes were very bright. "You've _never_ been able to hide from me."

"Neither have you." Rey whispered. He was close enough, now, that she didn't need to speak loudly for him to hear her. Still, she should yell, shove him, scream, _something._

"The difference is," The back of his thumb brushed her cheek. The blunt nail of it scraped, just slightly. "I'm not trying to hide."

Rey blinked, rapidly. Her breath came shallow. "Don't."

Ben cocked his head, the tip of his nose brushing hers. A smile flickered across his face, and his forehead was suddenly very heavy on hers. His hair tickled her cheeks, and his breath filled her nostrils and parted mouth. Her eyes fluttered shut for a moment. "Why?"

Rey hated to admit weakness; hated to admit she wasn't as in control of herself as she should be. She put her hands on the flat of his chest, and pushed him away. His heart hammered under her palm. "I won't be able to stop." 

Ben nodded, slowly, looking down at their hands - entertwined, but braced between them, like a barrier. "Rey, I _never_ stopped."

"You have to." Rey whispered, pulling her fingers away. He grasped at them, ineffectually, his throat bobbing. 

"Rey - " As she left, on shaky knees, smoothing her clothes and trying not to look at him, Ben's voice followed her, as if it could make her stay, or make her reconsider her choice. "I’m sorry I left you. I would have taken you anywhere. Everywhere. I would have given you the galaxy.”

He paused, and she waited in the port, knowing there was something more he wanted to say. She wanted to hear it, even if she couldn't reciprocate. Even if he said it to her retreating form. Even if he didn't, anymore. His voice cracked, boyishly. “I _loved_ you."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> How long can Rey hold out?!
> 
> P.S. The pain train is making a stop at smut station, soooo that ought to give you an idea of how long she can hold out. Seducing her was definitely more effective than, oh, murdering people for her.


	18. Chapter 18

The youngling – named, without any input on her part, Kaya – sat in Ben’s lap on the steps of the Senate. She was playing with a pebble, trying to lift it off of his patiently flattened hand with the Force. Her little brow furrowed with concentration.

Rey pretended she didn’t see them as she trotted down the steps after the Senator from Bespin she’d been shadowing. Luke, preparing for his return to Yavin IV, had left her under his watchful eye.

Skywalker, Rey knew, wouldn’t approve of his newest pupil fraternizing with Ben, an outcast of the academy. He’d fear Ben’s influence.

But he’d be wrong, Rey decided, finding a safe vantage point behind a conferring gaggle of Senators – the trade council – and watching them speak to each other, silently. Ben’s Force signature was as warm and calm as it ever was when he opened his mind to Kaya. It hummed comfortingly, and she got the sense that he enjoyed the company of another Force sensitive – one who didn’t look at him warily.

They could have made a child like that, if it weren’t for the little pink pills. She’d been little more than a youngling herself, when their hormones and feelings had gotten the better of them on the floor of her AT-AT. Much too young to be a mother. And where would they have gone? Luke wouldn’t have kept them. His parents would have been disappointed. They’d have been children, playing house on some rural planet – until they weren’t children anymore. Then, they would have grown out of their childish infatuation.

Their eyes met across the steps. Ben smiled, slowly, knowingly, and she saw, very clearly, what he thought. He’d been listening to her. Of course he knew she was watching him. _I still haven’t grown out of it._

For three days, they’d orbited in a binary system, each utterly aware of the others presence and drawn to the other as if by gravity. At the same time, they were repelled from each other by a multitude of forces – the Code, Luke Skywalker, and, in no small part, pride. Meanwhile, Han Solo and Senator Organa had had one of their famous rows. Rey had overheard it, mortified, from outside her offices in the Senate buildings. It was only a matter of time before Ben disappeared into the vastness of the galaxy again on the Millennium Falcon.

Rey had envied, more than once, Ben’s ability to cloak himself, and to hide his emotions. She couldn’t do the same. She couldn’t hide the regret she felt when she thought about what could have been.

It would never be, she chided herself. _There is no emotion, there is peace._

But regret, Rey decided, was a particularly nasty emotion. It was one she didn’t want to feel.

***

When Rey came to him that night, Ben didn’t say anything. He leaning against the rounded hatch of the crew quarters on the Falcon, bracing his weight on one arm. There were a whole constellation of freckles on it, ones she’d never noticed before. His hair was mussed, as if he’d been running his hands through it. Perhaps he’d been awake all night, like she had – he’d been standing there, waiting for her, as if he’d known she was coming.

“Are you alone?” Rey was out of breath, as if she’d been running. In truth, she’d walked slowly to the hanger, in the dead of night. A few times, she’d stopped and even turned around. She knew this was a bad idea.

 _No regrets_ , she reminded herself.

“We’re alone.” Ben’s voice was a low rumble. Rey didn’t bother asking where Han Solo was; she knew, from experience, that passion and anger sometimes were indistinguishable. He was with his wife. The Wookie would be nested into the bushes and grasses of some garden, kept warm by his thick coat of fur.

Somehow, she’d hoped the captain or the first mate would be aboard. It would give her an excuse not to –

“Well?” Ben asked, arrogantly, cutting off her train of thought. He _knew_ what she was there for. 

Rey chewed her lip, trying not to look at his bare chest, or at the dark, vertical line of hair on his belly that disappeared into his trousers. They were unbuttoned, half-open on his hips She could see his nest of dark curls peeking out of them. He wasn’t wearing underwear. It was ridiculous to be embarrassed by that; _he_ knew why she was there, and _she_ knew, even if she couldn’t quite admit it to herself.

Finally, she just told him, her voice raspy, “I’m not a Jedi yet.”

A ghost of a smile crossed Ben’s lips. He remembered this; remembered saying those exact words. He didn’t move, or even shift his weight. He lounged against the doorframe like a large, predatory feline.

“I want to do something.” She couldn’t find words to explain herself, so again, she borrowed his from all those years ago. “First.”

“Do what?” Ben knew, but he still asked. His eyes were dark and hooded.

Rey swallowed hard.  His Force signature had becoming something new – not warm, but _hot_. Not dark, but equally dangerous and forbidden. “Something I shouldn’t do. Something no one can ever know about.”

“Do your worst.” His gaze travelled the length of her body, and then settled on her face, as if that was the most fascinating part of her. “I’ll keep your secrets.”

Rey couldn’t quite reach his mouth, even on tip-toes. No matter – she didn’t want to. She crushed her lips to the pulse-point at the base of his throat, instead, before she could lose her nerve.

Only once she’d come to _him_ , did Ben put his arms around her and try to kiss her. His breath was hot on her chin and his nose was nudging against her cheeks, and she turned her face away.

“Don’t kiss me.” His mouth found her ear instead, and her eyes fluttered closed as he bit and sucked at it.  She ducked, pressing her lips into his collarbone. His skin was hot to the touch. It was a little salty, as if he’d been sweating in his sleep.

A kiss on the mouth was too intimate. Too personal. _Personal attachments are forbidden._

“That’s what makes them so fun.” Ben whispered, into her hairline, a trace of his father’s cockiness in his voice. He’d been in her head, seen her guilt. It _excited_ him.

His chest moved under her mouth, and then, suddenly, he was gripping her face, one cheek in each hand, and forcing her to look up at him. Rey thought he was going to force her to kiss him, but he didn’t. He made her look him in the eye. “Do you want me to kiss your cunt instead?”

It shocked her, and she could tell he liked shocking her. He licked his lips, and the point of his tongue mesmerized her. She could only nod, helplessly, and suddenly, she was lost in the dark. He’d abruptly grasped the hem of her shirt and pulled it up over her head.

If the two of them had had trouble fitting in a bunk when he’d been lankier and she’d been underfed, they had even more trouble now. Ben pushed her onto her back onto the lumpy mattress and ducked under the berth, straddling her calves. He had to hunch over her to avoid hitting his head. He looked down at her legs for a moment, his hands running up them.

Ben couldn’t get her pants off, Rey realized. He couldn’t back up any further – his heels were pressed against the berth, and her ankles were trapped under his backside. His brow furrowed, and for a moment he looked young, awkward, and unsure again.

Rey started to draw her legs up to her chest to give him room, and then, suddenly, he was sure of himself again. He slid off of the bunk and onto the floor, grasped her ankle, and pulled her towards him so that she was diagonal on the bunk, her legs hanging off of it. He tugged her pants off, one leg at a time, agonizingly slowly.

Just as he’d said he would, he kissed her between her legs, first spreading the downy, soft lips with his thumbs. It was a chaste, soft kiss, but placed just so. Her legs trembled. He waited.

“Please.” Rey managed. She could feel moisture trickling down the crease between her backside and her cunt, and she desperately wanted him to lick it away. That would probably be counterproductive, make her even more wet, but she wanted it. “Please kiss me again.”

Ben’s eyes burned with victory as he reared up over the bunk and tried to press his mouth to hers.

“No, wait – ” Thrashing desperately, Rey turned her cheek away.

“You asked.” He told her, huskily, holding her chin in one hand.

“I meant – ”

“Let me kiss you on your mouth first.” Ben whispered.

Rey closed her eyes, and didn’t stop him. His mouth was as soft and full as she remembered it, and he looked triumphant when he sunk back to his knees between hers.

Ben kissed her, as promised, and then he did more, his tongue easing around the nooks and crannies of her body until she shook her head back and forth, eyes squeezed shut. Her hips canted off the mattress, and her weight sunk onto his shoulders, as he closed his mouth around the secret spot, the one only her finger had teased for _years_.

Valiantly, Rey tried to keep quiet. If she was going to let him put his head in between her thighs, at least she could keep a scrap of her dignity by not moaning for him. She realized too late she’d made an error in judgment; in the silence, she could hear indecent, suckling sounds and his heavy, hushed breathing with perfect clarity.

When the tingle at her tailbone started to climb up, Rey nearly cried with relief. As it crested behind her eyes, she did cry. She didn’t realize it until she opened her eyes and moisture dribbled out onto her cheeks.

The mattress of the bunk creaked as Ben crawled back over her body, pulling his cock out of the opening at the top of his pants and pushing them down to his ankles. His member was leaking and red, and she’d forgotten the way it looked almost like it pained him when it was erect. He kissed his way up her belly and breasts, past all of her scars. She wondered if he remembered them all. 

Ben hesitated, when his face leveled with hers, as if her tears had taken him aback. Rey couldn’t quite see his expression through the blur of her embarrassing, out-of-nowhere tears.

“No more kissing.” Rey huffed, trying to sound tough.

A stupidly fond smile crossed Ben’s face, and he leaned down to brush his nose against hers, as he wedged his pelvis up against hers, forcing her still-trembling and weak legs further apart. “We’ll see.”

Rey thought she remembered every detail of the first time they’d fitted their bodies together. She’d certainly reminisced about it in great detail.

She’d forgotten the pain. Now, she winced as he pressed inside, in one slow, smooth stroke. There was no fumbling this time; apparently _he’d_ gotten better at this. She didn’t feel any more adept.

“You’re still so tight.” Ben managed, his voice strained. Rey made a soft noise of assent. His voice was fraught with pleasure from the tight fit. Hers would have been fraught with discomfort and nerves, if she’d spoken. His hips rotated, side to side, for an agonizingly long moment, opening her tight muscles up more. “I’m the only one who’s ever been inside your cunt, aren’t I?”

Rey nodded, breathlessly. Her stomach coiled up, hearing him talk like that. The words sounded wrong coming from his mouth, but so _right_. Heat pooled in her abdomen and seemed to ease his way when he started to push in and out.

As if reassuring himself, Ben went on, his voice pitching up as he thrust harder. “ _I’m_ the only one who’s ever fucked you. Does it hurt?” He’d asked her that question as a nervous, remorseful boy. Now he asked her as a man, and she could tell that, in a perverse way, he hoped it _did_ hurt a little.

“A little.” She squeaked, and Ben lurched against her in response. He grunted in satisfaction, put his head down, and worked against her in earnest. His sweat dripped onto her face, into her mouth and eyes. It stung, but Rey couldn’t bear to close her eyes. He looked almost beatified, transcendent with pleasure, even as he fucked her brutally hard.

But when she came again, unexpectedly, writhing and arching underneath him, with his hand crammed in between her thighs, he was suddenly a boy again, and humbled by her orgasm. “I still love you.” Ben sunk onto his elbows and rained kisses on her eyelids and cheeks and throat. His voice was reverent. “I’ve missed you all these years.”

“This doesn’t change anything.” Once Rey had found her voice again, she reprimanded him. He lifted his head from the space between her shoulder and her neck, his cheeks flushed and sweaty. His back heaved with the effort of slowing his strokes. He looked at her like he didn’t understand what she was saying, like he didn’t understand anything except _in, out, in, out._ “I’m still going to be a Jedi. I’m just not a Jedi _yet_.”

“You’re not a Jedi tonight.” Ben told her, in a broken voice. His thrusts were very slow now, as if trying to make this last and last. “Tonight, you’re mine.”

He marked her as his, with his mouth, on her neck. The purple, speckled bloom on her skin said she belonged to him. When he came a moment later, groaning, the visceral, primal heat of his seed in the deepest reaches of her said she belonged to him. The way his weight settled over her, trapping her, said she belonged to him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I can only publish this kind of chapter at night, because yeeeesh it's nerve-wracking. I'm trash. 
> 
> P.S. Ask nicely, and there might be more where this came from in the next chapter. I meant it when I said I was trash.
> 
> P.P.S. I just finished my outline for my next story and, oh man, am I excited to share it with you!


	19. Chapter 19

Ben was dreaming about Rey, like he often did. Sometimes his dreams were chaste and fantastical – they laid in the deep grass under the sun, or floated in cool water. In his most secret dreams, she had a rounded belly and long, loose hair, and she laughed at him when he brought her flowers.

This was _not_ one of those chaste dreams. Now, he dreamed about her wet tongue tracing the vein on the underside of his member, and soft, diligent licks on his swollen head. He had a reference point for that – her tongue darting out to lick sauce off of her fingers. Some of it had gotten on her chin.

In his dreams, he’d come like this, sometimes quickly, if she was as voracious as she’d been with her first real meal, and sometimes agonizing slowly, because she was a tease. Sometimes, when he woke up from his dreams, and he found out he’d _actually_ come. He didn’t begrudge himself that; he wouldn’t begrudge himself this, now.  

The head of his cock bumped something soft and fleshy – the back of her throat? – and then suddenly, she was choking, constricting around him. He heard a distant, disgruntled gurgling noise. He’d never dreamed _that_ before.

He wasn’t dreaming, then. Ben opened his eyes, and for a moment, he was disoriented. The soft curve of Rey’s back backside was flush against his ribs. It rose like a gentle hill from the sheets, paler than the rest of her. He blinked at it, confused, if appreciative.

It took him a moment to realized Rey was laying on her belly, next to him. Her feet were somewhere above his head; the slope of her spine next to his shoulder. Her head – _oh_. Her head was between his legs.

Ben might as well have been dreaming, but he knew he wasn’t, because there were so many details that his subconscious had never been _quite_ able to supply. Her hair was streaming over his thighs, tickling him. Her thumb and forefinger circled the base of his cock and squeezed, hard, enough to hold him off. A soft palm cupped and tugged his swollen, straining balls, gently, relieving some of the awful-but- pleasant pressure in them. And her mouth, her _wonderful_ mouth, was wrapped around him.

“You stayed.” He croaked, watching the crown of her head bob gently up and down.

There was a soft, wet popping sound, and then she said, softly, her voice muffled into the hair of his groin, “I stayed.”

Ben would have asked her why out-loud but he didn’t want her to answer. She’d have to use her mouth to answer, and he wanted her mouth otherwise occupied. As if she’d read his mind – maybe she had, his defenses had never been so useless as they were now – she rubbed her closed lips against the head of his member, smearing pre-cum across them and making him shudder. He felt her satisfied smile against his shaft as he did.

When Rey readjusted her weight on her elbows to take him in again, in a slow, sloppy motion, Ben pressed his fingers into her cunt from behind, his knuckles catching on the fleshy overhang of her firm backside. The vibration halfway down his cock from her answering moan made his ears ring. The muscles along her spine rippled like water as he curled his fingers one way, and then the other, twisting his wrist sleepily.

His thumb slicked through her folds to the spot that made Rey's legs twitch; she nearly kicked him in the head. That woke him up for good, and he moved his wrist faster, adding a third finger and twirling his thumb in a circle. Rey panted onto his thigh each time she bobbed down. Eventually, she stopped trying to. Her hand clenched around the root of him just as her cunt clenched around his fingers. A soft, almost surprised wail was muffed into the mattress of the bunk, between his thighs. Then, he was _glad_ she’d stopped touching and sucking him. Her whole body tensed, in a way that looked nearly painful.

In any other world, Ben could have watched forever as his two fingers, the thickest of them, pumped in and out of her, trailing shiny strands of wetness. In this world – the one in which Rey was sloppily licking the v-shaped ridge under his head, her body lax and half-draped over his – he wanted to see her face. He wanted to see her mouth stretched around his swollen cock – especially if she kept choking a little and struggling to suck on all of him.

The muscles at the bottom of Ben’s belly contracted impossibly tight as he imagined how she would look, her eyes watering a bit with the effort, and imagined pulling her closer by her hair to make her take more of him, nonetheless. He pulled his fingers from the channel of her body, and dug his wet, sticky fingernails into the soft fleshiness of her cheek as his orgasm reared its head up.

Hissing through his teeth, Ben tangled his fingers in her hair. He had a vague notion that he ought to be polite, and not just ejaculate down her throat without warning or regard. He ought to pull her away by the hair.

It was too late to be polite. Rey made a strangled, surprised noise, and started to jerk away. Without thinking, Ben pushed her head back down, rather than pull it up, his elbow pressing in between her shoulder blades and rendering her immobile. Only a little of his spend got on his thighs and belly; she sucked down the rest, his hand rubbing circles onto the crown of her skull.

The semen on his skin had cooled by the time Rey curled onto her side, her breath hot on his thigh. She stayed that way, her face hidden, so he had the courage to ask, “Where did you learn to do that?”

Rey must have heard the jealousy in his voice. She didn’t lift her head. “There hasn’t been anyone else, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“That’s what I’m asking.” Ben dropped his head back onto the pillow, exhaling heavily with both relief and post-orgasmic satisfaction. In a tangled, awkward fold of limbs, he could hear Rey readjust herself. She tucked herself into the crook of his elbow, but without looking, he knew she wasn’t as sleepy as he was. Her hand worried a rough patch of skin on his chest.

His cock twitched, valiantly, against his thigh, when her hand moved lower, down the trail of dark hair that was damp with sweat.  He opened his eyes and huffed out a nervous laugh when her fingers met with the sticky, softening skin of his penis. “Rey, I’m not twenty-two anymore.”

He’d been joking, but Rey seemed to assign more significance to his words than he’d intended. She traced the protrusion of his hip-bone, and he knew what she was thinking. They weren’t children anymore.

“No, you’re not.” Rey worked her lower lip between her teeth. “How many?”

“How many?” Ben echoed.

Her voice was low, as if she was embarrassed to be asking. “How many women have you taken to bed?”

Ben stared at the ceiling of the berth. “You were the first.”

“Oh.” Rey’s voice was very small. He’d expected her to sound jealous, or possessive, and to feel a rush of masculine pride in response. Instead, she just sounded sad, and he felt badly.

“And there was no one after that.” Ben paused, wondering whether he should admit this. It felt like a betrayal, even if a small one. He’d always felt it was a betrayal. That was what had cut short every other interaction he’d ever had with a female. “There could have been. There almost was, a few times.”

“Oh.” She repeated, even quieter. When she spoke again, curiosity crept into her voice. “Then how did you – get better at it?”

Ben couldn’t stop a cocky grin from spreading across his mouth. “You think I’m good at it?”

“You’re _better_.” He heard the smile curving her words.

“Dirty holovids.” Ben crooked his chin to look down at her. He kept a straight face. It wasn’t a lie, exactly. He’d masturbated more often then he cared to admit in this very bunk, though only occasionally to a pornographic holovid. More often, he thought about _her_. “ _Lots_ of dirty holovids.”

Rey laughed, her eyes crinkling up in the way he loved. “Which one were your favorites?”

“Which holovids?” Ben scrunched up his nose. “The ones where you suck my cock.”

“You don’t have holovids of that.” Rey blushed, burying her face half-way into his armpit. She peered up at him with one eye.

Ben tapped his temple. “I do. In here.”

Laughing, Rey snuggled deeper into the angle of his arm. Without any natural light, Ben pretended it was still nighttime, and tightened his grip around her. He ignored the chrono. Let Chewie and his father find them there. He didn’t care. Han would probably be proud, anyways.

“What stopped you?” Ben had expected Rey to sound sleepy – hoped she’d fall asleep in his arms again – but she didn’t. “You’re not a Jedi.”

“What? Oh.” Ben realized what she meant. He rubbed his nose into her scalp. “You. You’re my first and last. There’s no one in between.” When Rey didn’t say anything, he deflected and hid the burn of rejection with a nervous joke. “That, and I think I was conceived in this bunk. Killed the mood, every time.”

He hadn’t necessarily expected Rey to laugh at his joke, but he hadn’t expected her face to go white, either. She sat up, suddenly, narrowly missing smacking her head on the berth. “I have to go.”

“What?” Ben tried to stop her as she clambered over him and out of the bunk, scrambling for her clothes. “Why?”

“I have to go to the med-center.” Rey’s voice was tight and high. She yanked on her boots without looking at him.

“Oh.” Ben sat up, suddenly realizing what she meant, and realizing what they _hadn’t_ done the night before. “Please stay. Another hour or two won’t make a difference – ”

“I have to go. I _cannot_ have a baby.” Rey rounded on him with stunning ferocity. She looked like she was about to cry, or scream, or throw things. It was like looking in a mirror of his younger self.

***

Rey had planned to slink out of the hanger, hair mussed, smelling like sex, with a purple bruise on her neck, before the sun rose and the first shift started. The first few pilots and mechanics were streaming in between the ships, yawning. She tried to pretend to be nonchalant and stroll out of the hanger.

When she saw Han Solo walking towards her, she nearly bolted.

“Hey, Jedi-girl.” The grizzled old smuggler acted like seeing her in the hanger at dawn wasn’t at all unexpected.

“It’s Rey.” She squeaked, wondering if the surface of the planet might open up and swallow her. It wouldn’t be an unwelcome catastrophe.

“All right, _Rey_.” Solo squared his hands on hips. She’d seen that stance before. It made her throat ache. “My kid is in love with you.”

Rey blinked. Ben had said as much, hours ago, but that had been when he’d been making love to her, kissing her face and free of all inhibitions. Hearing those words, from someone else, in the cold, naked light of day, was different. “I… I know.”

“No, I don’t think you do.” Han frowned. “He’s completely useless.”

“It’s useless to love me.” Rey blurted out. “He knows that.”

“Ben never had much common sense.” Han made a face. “You seem to have plenty of it, since you’re sneaking off my ship at the ass-crack of dawn.”

Rey felt her face flood with blood. “I – ”

“I won’t say anything.”

Rey exhaled. She didn’t know why she felt she needed to explain herself to Han, but she did. “I want to be a Jedi. I _want_ – ”

“Only you know what you want. Not Luke, not Ben, and not me.” Han cut her off. He shifted on his feet, rubbing his chin, slowly. “But I think I have a pretty good idea. There’s a middle ground between _what_ you want, and _who_ you want. I had to find it years ago. Ben and Luke, they’re black and white, east and west. But you’re like me. You can exist in the middle.”

Rey didn’t say anything – she couldn’t – and Han sighed. “Go get some bacta on that – that _thing_ on your neck.” Rey’s hand flew to cover the mark. “Oh, and Jedi-girl.” Han stopped her before she could flee. “We’re headed for the Outer Rim today. If you want to say goodbye.”

Rey felt unbidden tears spring to her eyes. She tried to swallow them down. The effect was only to make her voice sound funny and thick. “I don’t want to.”

“Then don’t.” Han shrugged. “I never do, so it’s never really goodbye.”

***

A standard month later, the Senate Committee for the Common Defense committee alighted on Bespin. Rey tagged along, feeling, as always, like a little girl. This was a new world, only the fourth she’d visited. She should have been flushed with adventure and freedom.

Rey was, instead, lonely. The Committee had rented out a whole floor of the tallest hotel in Cloud City. They slept above its namesake clouds. Her room was too big, and cold. Her bed was too empty.

Her comm device felt heavy and hot in her pocket, as she stood at the window, watching the clouds drift by. She fumbled it out worried it between her sweaty palms.

Rey wondered whether Ben had ever been here, as a child, on his father’s lap, or as an adult. She wondered whether he’d come here, if she sent for him.

She nibbled her lip for a moment, and then decisively – before she could change her mind –  tapped in a pair of coordinates.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Good Dad Han ships the fuck out of it. 
> 
> P.S. Quite a few of you let me know, in no uncertain terms, that you would be upset if Ben had slept with other women. Truth be told, I went back and forth on this question. On one hand, I hate writing one half of my pairing with other people. On the other hand, I thought that, realistically, Ben would have had some sort of dalliance during the five years they were apart. Finally, I decided that he would have met other girls, but that he never would have been able to share something as intimate as sex with any of them. Nobody throw rotten fruit at me. Love me. Love me like Ben loves Rey.


	20. Chapter 20

Rey’s comm device didn’t emit a reassuring beep after a few minutes. She wasn’t sure why she expected it to. She’d never given him its routing numbers; she hadn’t sent anything more than a set of coordinates.

Ben was probably angry with her. She’d left him laying naked in bed, spitting fire at him about how careless they’d both been. The pills the med-droid had given her had made her nauseous, and when she’d stopped vomiting, and crawled into her bed, too ashamed and worn out to cry,  she’d felt his absence like a hole in the fabric of the Force. She’d expected to feel his anger, or roiling hurt. She’d felt neither. She’d felt nothing.

Now, in her hotel room high above Cloud City, Rey imagined how he looked when he was angry – mouth a tight line, brow creased, eyes hooded. She imagined how he felt when he was angry – dark, powerful, _intoxicating_. Somehow, that felt like an even dirtier or deeper secret then what they’d done in his bunk.

Her comm beeped and with embarrassing excitement, Rey rolled over in bed and snatched the tiny chromium device from where she’d placed it, reverently, on the empty second pillow. She held her breath as she read the display.

Kaya was adjusting well to life on Yavin IV. Luke was pleased with the reports he’d received from Senator Pressk and Chief Leia Organa. He hoped she was practicing her forms, and meditating. Emphasis on _mediating._

Angry with herself for having been so eager, Rey threw the comm across the room. Luke’s message reminded her starkly of her own inadequacies. The first time – no, the third time, all total, she supposed – was a mistake. This, _this_ was willful.

The comm beeped again, and she just rolled over, balling her hands into fists. She would not wait with baited breath. She would _not_ touch herself.

She wouldn’t.

***

When the sun was starting to stain the clouds, Rey decided she _would_. She rolled over onto her back, her belly and thighs clammy and hot from being crushed into the mattress. Adjusting her stiff neck, she crammed her hand into the waistband of her leggings and shut her eyes.

She wasn’t particularly practiced at this, and she was slippery. Still, she could find the secret spot and rub it, her wrist crooked awkwardly. Her finger pad was rough from years of being burned by hot sand and metal; even five years on Yavin IV hadn’t changed that.

 _No, no, no, no._ The sentiment tumbled into her mind as if by accident. Rey sat upright, looking wildly around the room. She was as frantic as that voice had sounded. For a sickening moment she thought she’d been caught, by who, she didn’t dare guess.

 _Wait for me. Just wait._  

“Ben?” Rey laid back on the bed, slowly, and flattened her hands over her abdomen. One crept, traitorously, and hopefully tantalizingly, to her left nipple. It puckered and rose through her shirt, and now she could feel him, nearby, a barely contained maelstrom.  _Ben?_

There was a touch of dark humor in his voice when it slithered in between her ears again. Now, he knew she was teasing him. _I’m almost with you._ _Be patient._

***

Ben tried to take her into his arms as soon as she shut the door behind him. If he hadn’t, Rey might have thought he was some sort of mirage. The sunrise painted his dark eyes with flames.

“No kissing.” Rey turned her face away from his, backing away

“You sent me the coordinates.” Ben pulled her closer, by her hips. His hands splayed across them, and he looked her up and down, like he was checking to make sure she hadn’t changed. A slow smile spread across his lips when he realized she hadn’t. “And I flew across the galaxy to you. I’m going to kiss you, now.”

He did, but it was a surprisingly gentle kiss, as if he knew his words alone had made her weak, and he didn’t need to overpower her. They backed slowly across the room towards her rumpled bed. He bore her onto it, not seeming to care that it smelled like sweat, and he never _stopped_ kissing her.

Ben made love to her with his mouth, sweet and tender love, as his hands moved the hem of her shirt up. He rolled it under her chin and she thought he’d try to kiss her breasts – she arched up, wanting him to – but he couldn’t seem to stop kissing her. His Force signature glowed around her and she realized he was happy. Not flush with triumph, like he had been when she’d come to him on the Millennium Falcon. _Happy_ , happy that she’d called for him and waited for him.

When he drew away, breaking the hold her arms had on him, he kept dipping his head back down to kiss her. Rey was long past resisting. She tilted her chin up to meet him, her mouth landing clumsily on his chin and the corners of his mouth.

Rey bit her own lip as Ben stopped kissing her, finally, reluctantly. He left her on the bed, his heat and weight gone from her. A shiver ran down her spine, compounded by her sudden nakedness – as he stood, Ben tugged her leggings down, reverently, easing them over each ankle and kissing the hard little bones the fabric caught on there. She thought he might sink in between her bare legs, then, but he didn’t. He straightened up and balled her leggings in his hands, watching her undulate her hips with frustration.

“Now.” Ben told her, tossing the leggings to the floor. He unfastened his pants, pulled out his erect member, and stroked it. “You can start.”

Rey blinked at him. Her mouth was hanging open – she was dimly aware – and her breath was escaping in shallow, hot puffs of air.

“Go on.” His voice dropped an octave. “I’m with you.”

Rey was, inexplicably, embarrassed.

 _Don’t be. You showed this to me before._ He told her, in her head. 

Rey worried her knees together. She’d been younger, then, and completely uninhibited. Nothing had embarrassed her. Everything had intoxicated her. Everything about him had intoxicated her.

He still did intoxicate her, in a different way. Men weren’t mysterious, or dangerous, anymore. But he was, because he was forbidden.

Rey spread her legs just enough to push her wrist in between them, and found the spot again. He exhaled, slowly, his gaze drifting down her body. As she rubbed, the muscles of her legs loosened. She hadn’t realized they’d been so tight until they were relaxed and splayed. Almost as soon, they were tensing up again, of their own accord, along with the rest of her body, as her orgasm rose up from the arches of her feet to the roots of her hair.

When Rey opened her eyes, limp again, Ben was staring at her face. He was loosely holding his cock, but his hand was still, as if he was too entranced by what he was watching to pay mind to anything else, even his ruddy, leaking member.

Ben climbed over her shaking, spread legs slowly, predatorily. He looked bizarrely proud, even if he hadn’t been the one to make her come. Or maybe – he had, in his own way.

“I am out of my mind for you.” He told her, in the hushed manner of confession, bracing his arms as if prepared for her rejection.

Rey didn’t answer, but this time, she kissed him.

***

It was well and truly daylight; Rey had responsibilities to attend to, and guilt to let fester. It had already begun to coil in her belly. He seemed unaffected by it, sprawled on his back with his arm crooked behind his head.

“We can’t do this again.” She said, choppily, sitting on the very edge of the mattress and yanking her boots on, wishing he wouldn’t caress her lower back through her hastily-donned shirt. She flinched away.

“We both know,” The mattress creaked as Ben sat up and leaned back on his hands. He didn’t look angry, this time, as she left the warm bed they’d shared. He looked almost tender, like he knew her and knew her intentions better than she did. “That we will.”

He spoke with as much certainty and gravity as if he was using the Force to compel her. He was right, and there was no use lying to him, even if she could lie to herself.

***

Ben saw Rey again fourteen days later, on Naboo. She sent him coordinates, again, at sundown, and this time, she knew to wait for him. He came to her rooms under cover of night and when she said, half-jokingly, not to kiss her, he didn’t.

Instead, he turned her around and bent her over. He fucked her hard enough for her to feel it in her teeth and her lungs, not even bothering to take off all of her clothes. There was nothing tender about their physical congress. It was something animals did, not something lovers did.

But, somehow, rutting like that was even more intimate, on an emotional level. He let his emotions bleed out and into her, and they weren’t tender or warm emotions. They were raw and frustrated, and his Force signature was dark and hot. _Intoxicating._

Ben didn’t kiss her until they were sweaty and boneless on her bed together, crammed tightly in between the wall and the drop to the floor. It wasn’t a bed for two bodies. He wasn’t supposed to be in her bed.

But he was in her bed, crushed close to her, and she couldn’t bring herself to regret it when his spend was cool on the inside of her thighs and his sweaty chest tasted pleasantly salty under her open mouth.

***

 “Will you teach me to hide myself?” Rey asked him, at an hour when they both should have been asleep – or rather, she should have been asleep, and he should have been long gone. “The way you do?”

Ben shifted underneath her. For all his protestations that he wasn’t as young as he’d once been, he was hard again. His cock was pressing into her ribcage, still sticky from sex, but there was something of even more pressing concern.

Sooner or later, Luke would come to Naboo, or he would send for her. Sooner or later, he would suspect. No – he already suspected. He’d suspected when he’d left her on Naboo. Luke would _know._ Her consciousness of her own wrongdoing only compounded every time she saw Ben.

She could stop this foolish behavior. She should. If she begged forgiveness, and set a new course, one righteous in the eyes of the Order, all would be forgiven.

Or, Rey reasoned, tracing the pink, bumpy skin around his nipple, she could hide.

“I’ll teach you to hide yourself.” Ben answered her, his hands tangling briefly in her hair. He held her head in place and slid down on the mattress, his skin scraping against hers, to kiss her. “But not from me. I want to be able to find you, always.”

***

Ben always did find Rey, sometimes quickly, sometimes only an hour or two before she had to report to the Senate. Sometimes they were in her bed, and sometimes they were in rented hotel rooms. That was better – it felt more anonymous.

Chief Leia Organa began giving her strange looks. Rey ignored them, plastered on a mask of Jedi stoicism, and focused on hiding in the Force, the way Ben had taught her.

Sometimes, though, it seemed as if Ben’s mother knew what she was doing, with or without the Force.

***

The fifth time Rey sent him coordinates, she was on Chandrila because trade and peace treaties were being signed – it was a society rife with lawyers and courts, after all. Chief Organa had told her, in passing – but pointedly – that Chandrila was where she had given birth to her child. Rey could imagine him here, as a little boy. It was a beautiful world. Not exotic, but always busy.

When Ben didn’t come to her rooms, Rey thought, at first, that he was making her wait. Then, he thought that he had forgotten her, or that he wouldn’t come at all.

The sun rose, and set again, before he came to her. He crept into her bed in the darkness, wrapping himself around her and waking her up with sharp, almost painful kisses to the crest of her shoulder.

“I thought you weren’t coming.” Rey whispered, half into her pillow. She was ashamed that it was still damp from her tears.

“I told you I would always find you.” He brushed his nose along the slope of her shoulder blade.

Rey almost asked him why he hadn't found her sooner – had he gotten caught up in a deal gone bad with Han? Distracted by a skin trader on some dusty planet, new prey? Had she done something wrong? She didn’t ask, because she thought she knew why he hadn’t come right away.

Ben had _tried_ to stay away from her. He hadn’t wanted to follow the coordinates she’d sent. He hadn’t wanted to see her. He’d come against his better judgment.

“That’s not true.” Ben said, into the curly hairs at the nape of her neck. “I was just… trying to hide myself.” Rey rolled over, into the circle of his arms, and studied his face in the light of the two moons. She traced the sharp line of his nose, and the soft arches of his eyebrows. His breath tickled her wrist. “I find I can’t, when I’m with you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *Ahem* this story will be reaching its destination in two chapters. Plan accordingly (plan to read my next story).


	21. Chapter 21

“I thought you snuck off to see your girl,” Han remarked, dryly, when Ben slouched into the curved booth of the Falcon’s crew bay at an ungodly hour. The younger man had borrowed – not stolen, he told himself, _borrowed_ – a ship to disappear for a few hours the night before. He’d been back on Coruscant before dawn rose over the skyscrapers, but his father was, inexplicably, already awake and observant. “But you’re in a terrible mood this morning.”

“I wasn’t anywhere.” Ben said, shortly, spilling caf as he poured it into a mug. He’d given up trying to hide his sojourns. Just as his father had discerned that he was slipping away to track down skin traders, he’d discovered he was at Rey’s beck and call.

Han made a soft, amused noise. “You two kids have a fight?”

Ben glared over his mug. It was too early – both too early in the morning, and too soon – to be talking to his father about this. “We didn’t have a fight.”

“But you didn’t have – .” Han wiggled his eyebrows.

They _had_ had sex, but Ben wasn’t going to admit that. “For kriff’s sake. That’s… _private_.”

Han’s eyes crinkled in a way that betrayed his age. “It’s not going to stay _private_ forever.”

“It will if she has her way.” Ben snapped. His father had unknowingly touched on a sore spot – one that he kept as secret as his trysts with Rey. He’d shout it from the tallest spires on Coruscant if she’d let him: he loved her. She’d never let him. She wasn’t _his_. Even so, he was hers, irrevocably. He’d crawl across coals to her. In his weaker moments, Ben hated himself for being so pathetic.

There was long, uncomfortable silence, and then Han made a good faith effort to change the subject. “I told Calrissian we’d make a run for him.”

Ben didn’t answer. He fiddled with his comm device, missing the little blue sphere he’d carried around and worried in his hand for years. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw his father chewing the corner of his mouth, the same way he did when he was thinking, and unsure of what to say.

“You know, after all these years, I still come running whenever your mother calls.” Han sounded as if he was trying to be fatherly – something he wasn’t particularly good at, for all his off-the-mark advice and anecdotes. He was more of a friend, in some ways, than a parent.

Ben exhaled through his teeth. He flexed and unflexed his hand. “You don’t resent it?”

“She doesn’t resent me for leaving.” Han stretched out his legs, with a long sigh.

Ben stared out the viewport. “How do you know she’ll keep calling you back?”

“I convinced her to marry me. That, and I got her pregnant.” Han grinned, and for a moment, he really was fatherly – embarrassing comments and all. “With you.”

***

A cat-and-mouse game had begun in earnest. Rey would send her coordinates to Ben, but when he touched down on Naboo, or whatever member planet of the New Republic she had dutifully followed some Senate committee to, she’d hide herself from him in the Force. He’d taught her that in increments. It became a challenge, for her, to see if she could hide from him. It became a point of pride, for him, to prove that she couldn’t.

Tonight, it didn’t feel as if Rey was hiding. He felt her, muted, but distinct in the Force, as soon as he was on-world. Something different shimmered in her Force signature. It warmed and swirled around him affectionately as he took her in his arms, as if it was a diaphanous, airborne creature that recognized him. She smiled up at him, even if they’d parted on bad terms two standard weeks earlier. “You found me.”

“You weren’t hiding.” Ben couldn’t stop the rush of tenderness that colored his words, mumbling into the crown of her braided hair. Rey creased her brow, tilting her head back further as he suspended her weight with his arms. She looked like she was about to argue with him that she _was_ , but he kissed her, instead. That was one battle he’d won – he could kiss her, whenever he liked – even if he was still mired in a war between her heart and her mind.

“I was _trying_ to.” She said, indignantly. She’d been practicing.

Ben traced the curve of her cheek. There was a little scar, there, from shrapnel. He kissed it, dryly. “I don’t want to hide anymore.”

Rey’s smile faltered. “From me?”

“From the galaxy.” Ben caught her again, tightening the bands of his arms around her ribs as she tried to pull away, her face stricken. “I love you. I have not kept that a secret from you. If you’d have me, I’d ma – ” Ben stopped himself, his jaw working anxiously. He suddenly looked almost ashamed, and Rey thought she knew what word he’d bitten back.

“Marry?” Rey squeaked. “ _Marry_ me?”

“We could marry in secret.” Ben went on, and she realized he’d meant what he’d said. It hadn’t been just a slip of the tongue. It had been a secret, festering idea, finally admitted aloud. “Jedi of the old Order married secretly and had children. My grandfather was one of them.”

“ _Children_?” Rey would be lying if she said she hadn’t ever considered children – she’d considered it when she’d seen him with Kaya. She considered it when she remembered how his eyes lit up as he taught her about the Force. She considered it every time she was a few  – or more than a few –  hours late taking an emergency contraceptive.

 “I thought you would want a family.” It was a low blow, and Rey flinched when it landed.

“Ben.” Her voice cracked.  “I had a family. And they’re dead.”

A flush spread up his neck. “I mean a family of your own.”

“With you.” Rey supplied, flatly.

Ben didn’t reply, but color rose high on his cheekbones, as if he was embarrassed. When he spoke, his words were halting, and he seemed like a boy again. “I still love you after all these years. At first I thought it was just… they say you don’t forget your first love. But you’re my only love. I am convinced of it now.”

Rey swallowed hard. She could condemn herself to loneliness, to the life of a Jedi, but she could not condemn him to wander the galaxy alone. She must love him, then, she realized, a little shockwave tremoring through her. It defied reason, and logic, and the Code, but it was true. “We are not... on the same path, Ben.”

Ben gathered her hands in his, and she realized they were in the posture of a bride and groom, before some ancient, tribal altar. “I only ask that our paths cross, from time to time, and that when we meet, we meet as lovers.”

“Lovers?” That was what they were, in secret. She was unclear of what he was asking, then.

His voice dropped an octave, and he amended his words. “Husband and wife.”

Slowly, Rey nodded. She gripped his hands for purchase, her knees suddenly going weak. “No matter where our paths take us, we will always find each other.” She swallowed thickly. “I promise.”

Something changed on Ben’s face. He kissed the back of one hand, and then the other, holding them in his much larger fingers as if they were fragile. “Will you? Will you promise me?”

***

They were married on Chandrila three standard days later, each absconding for a few hours. When Ben found Rey, on the steps of the municipal building, he was struck by how different she looked in the light of day, in a crowded city. She didn’t look like a Jedi or a scavenger.

“Hello.” She said, almost shyly. “There’s a line. We’ll have to wait.”

“I can wait a little longer.”

They’d chosen this planet, busy and efficient, because here, they could be anonymous. No cleric would remember a nervous young couple, eschewing vows and ceremonies. No one would go looking through the billions of archived marriage certificates. They could hide in plain sight. Indeed, when they reached the front of the line, the municipal cleric looked bored.

The marriage was more or less paperwork. Ben signed first, bending double. He felt her gaze, hot on his skin, as he wrote his given name and his father’s name on the dotted line. It would be a matter of public record, filed alphabetically. Even if Rey didn’t have a last name, and would have to fabricate one, his name – their name – would be on the wedding certificate, for time eternal.

He wondered if she’d hesitate, when he slid the flimsy certificate across the plasteel counter to her. He presented it like a peace treaty, and in a sense, that was what it was. A secret marriage was a truce. It would put the warring in him at peace to know that she belonged to him.

When Rey had signed her name – she only hesitated as she wrote the fake surname – she straightened up. She looked almost confused. “That’s all?”

“That’s all.” The reptilian cleric looked bored, as if she did this a hundred times a day. Perhaps she did, but to Ben, the next words were still monumental: “Legally, you’re married.”

Grinning, Ben turned to her. His gaze settled on her mouth.

“No kissing.” Rey’s lips twitched, and in the end, she couldn’t stop herself from smiling.

Ben ducked towards her, ignoring the cleric’s sky-ward rolling eyes. “I’ll kiss you whenever I like, wife.”

“Take your copies.” The cleric interrupted. She brandished two flimsies, with a limp wrist. Ben took his and studied it, as if he needed to memorize it. Rey took hers, folded it over and over, until it was a neat square, and then tucked it into her tunic, next to her heart. “And you don’t need to kiss her. You already signed.”

“Oh, I know I don’t need to.” Ben addressed the disgruntled municipal employee, first, straight-faced, and then looked at Rey. He crooked his arm around the back of her head, still holding in his hand the document that bound them together in the eyes of the law and the whole galaxy. “I just _want_ to kiss her.”

***

They’d met in a dozen hotel rooms, on a dozen planets. Most, billed to whatever Senate committee Rey was shadowing, were much more expensive than the one they breathlessly booked after the paperwork was said and done. It was a few blocks from the municipal building, and equidistant from the spaceport. Rey knew she ought to go straight to the latter, before her absence was noticed on Naboo.

The cleric had cleared her throat, when they’d kept kissing at her counter. Couples behind them in line had the grace to look embarrassed. Unrepentant, Ben had clasped Rey's hand in his and pressed a kiss to her fingers. “Will you be missed?”

“Yes.” Rey had tried to memorize how carefree and boyish he looked in that moment. “Why?”

“I’d like to keep kissing you.” He'd looked equal parts wicked and tender. “Among other things.”

Now, when Ben hoisted her into his arms and carried her over the threshold of the grungy little hotel room, kicking the door shut behind him, Rey felt, for the first time, like a newlywed. On this lumpy, narrow mattress, with the sounds of traffic bleeding through the thin walls, they would have their wedding night. It wasn’t even midday on Chandrila.

Between twenty-two and twenty-seven, something profound had changed in Ben. Twenty-seven year old Ben was rougher with her, and he said things that would have made twenty-two year old Ben flush to the tips of his ears. He had something of his father in him, and something dark.

Tonight, Ben was twenty-two again. He carried her in his arms like a child and laid her out on the bed, lowering her so slowly she felt as if gravity wasn’t asserting itself on her. He hunched over her prone, lax body and kissed her through her clothes, all the way from her mouth down to her boots, and then knelt to take them off. He kissed her bare ankles when he’d thrown her shoes across the floor, and then folded up the cuffs of her pants, pressing his lips to her calves.

Rey propped herself up on her elbows and watched him unfasten her belt and trousers. He peeled them down and then balled them up in his hands.  A peculiar look crossed his face, and she knew what he’d found.

“You kept this?” He held up the blue marble that had been in her pocket. He looked surprised, and Rey cocked her head at him.

“You kept it, all those years.”

A smile flickered across his mouth. “I carried it because I was in love with you all those years.”

Rey exhaled, slowly. Her heart thumped behind her breastbone, a slow reassuring rhythm, as if her body couldn’t process adrenaline or fear with the steady glow of his Force signature warming it. “Why do you think I carry it?”

Ben looked at the marble in his palm for a moment, his eyes very dark. Rey flushed. She felt the heat of it in her ears, but she didn’t elaborate.

“Why?” Ben asked, plainly.

“I carry it,” Rey bit her lower lip. He waited, his gaze almost tortured. “Because I love you.”

Ben swallowed hard, at a loss for words. He turned his head from side to side, very slowly, almost overcome with emotion, and then turned away, tucking the marble back into the fabric of her pants. When he came back to bed, his eyes were shining, and his voice thick. “Keep it, then.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Secret weddings always portend disaster... or do they? Stay turned.


	22. Chapter 22

“Rey.” Leia Organa’s voice, as always, belied her small stature. Rey stopped short in her retreat when she heard it. She turned around, turning against the tide of Senators and aids leaving the conference room.

“I didn’t think you knew my name.” She fought to keep her voice steady. When she’d trailed into the Senate that afternoon, Leia Organa had swiveled on the spot where she stood and looked straight at her, a peculiar look coming over her face. It was disconcerting, as was her searching, appraising expression now.

“I know more about you than you think.” The Senator touched her elbow and strangely, despite the fact that her hand was small and soft, it reminded her of Ben. There was something reassuring about that gesture.

Still, Rey felt her stomach knot. She’d known, in her heart of hearts, that her marriage would not be a secret forever. It was only a matter of time before Ben launched another assault on her defenses. He made no secret of his love for her. He wouldn’t be satisfied until the whole galaxy knew. In that sense, giving in just a little bit had been a monumental mistake. It was a mistake she couldn’t bring herself to regret, even if their union was a secret no more. “You have the Force.”

Leia smiled a little. Her signature was faint, in comparison to Luke’s or to Ben’s, but consistent, like a little hummingbird’s wings. “Like my son. Like you.”

Rey swallowed hard. She’d carefully buried the most precious secret – her marriage – in the recesses of her memories. If Leia had found it out, Luke would, too. She steeled herself. “Like Master Skywalker.”

Something sympathetic crossed the older woman’s face. “Yes.”

 “Can you – can you look into my thoughts, and memories, like Ben can?”

“No.” Leia answered. “But I don’t need to.”

“How did you know, then?” Rey’s gut churned. Had she looked through the marriage records? Had Ben’s father guessed and contacted her? Had – worst of all words – Ben been careless with the secret, and told her? Had he told anyone else?

Leia smiled serenely. “A mother always recognizes her son.”

Rey blinked, her panic arrested. “I – what do you mean?”

“His Force signature.” Leia’s gaze drifted down her body, and Rey realized that Leia Organa _didn’t_ know about their secret wedding. There was something else she knew, and suddenly, Rey knew it, too. “Don’t you recognize it?”

***

The younglings, the very smallest of them, were in the midst of elementary lightsaber drills in the main courtyard when Rey worked up the courage to approach her Jedi master. The mid-morning humidity of Yavin IV had settled into her skin and hair; she’d missed it, strangely. After years on a dry desert, she loved the wet, heavy air on the moon.

The rows of children moved their training sabers – too heavy for their little hands – in clumsy forms. One of them, Hrea, saw Rey, and dropped hers. With a squeal, she broke with the line and ran towards the older student.

“Rey’s back!” Someone said. The words and excitement rippled through the pupils.

Rey crouched and caught Hrea with one arm, wrapping the other arm around Kaya, who crept like a shy, stray pet to her side. She’d put on weight, and muscle. Her little arms weren’t quite so stringy.

Luke Skywalker waded into the fray of distracted students, palming the tops of their heads and shushing them. The drills were a lost cause. “Find a calm place, and meditate.”

“I ought to meditate, too.” Rey rose to her feet, unsteadily, as the chagrined students dispersed. “I’m… unsettled.”

Luke’s face showed the slightest reaction; like a minute ripple on a glassy still pond. He knew, then. Her Force signature had changed, roiling from a deeper, different part of her body and contorting into a new thing entirely. It was like being in Ben’s presence, enveloped in his familiar signature, even when he was worlds away. The Force had adapted to comfort and reassure her, as if it knew she confused and terrified by this turn of events.

“I find meditation helps me to accept what _is_.” He paused. “But I sense you already have.”

“Yes.” A few cycles in deep space, with the hyperdrive turned off, had accomplished that. She'd cried, and laughed, alternately. 

“And you haven’t come here for my counsel.”

“I came to get my things.” Rey exhaled through her teeth. It had been a painful decision to come to him, supplicant, and to acknowledge her betrayal. But she would not beg forgiveness of him. That, in and of itself, felt like a betrayal to Ben.

“A Jedi must have the deepest commitment.” Luke sounded as he were repeating someone else’s words. “When I was your age, my own master told me that he had been watching me. That all my life, I had looked to the future, to the horizon. My mind was never where _I_ was. I wanted adventure and excitement. _A Jedi craves not these things_.”

He looked at her steadily, and Rey admitted, sheepishly, “I cannot be a Jedi. I crave _him_.”

Luke inclined his head a little. “That life requires the deepest commitment, too.”

“I have made that commitment.” Rey blurted out. His brows rose, incrementally. “I married him.” Rey wondered, from the resulting expression on his face, whether she was the first person to shock Luke Skywalker. She felt an irrational urge to explain herself, but she couldn’t. Skywalker’s blue eyes blinked at her, wide as she’d ever seen them beneath his bushy brows, and then he roared with laughter. It was a bizarre sound – one she’d never heard before.

He said, almost to himself, “History repeats itself.”

Rey blew out all the air in her lungs, more unnerved by his laughter than anything. “I can’t be both a Jedi and his wife. I can’t live in both worlds.”

“No.” Luke agreed, or so she thought. “You cannot live in two different worlds.” He paused for a moment. “You can make your own world.”

“Master?” Rey’s voice cracked with emotion and surprise.

“You needn’t call me that anymore.” Luke reached out, and tucked a stray strand of chestnut hair behind her ear. There was something fatherly in this gesture. That was a posture he’d never allowed himself with her before, even though she’d longed for such a figure. “But you will always have a place here.”

“You’re not angry?”

Luke smiled, to her surprise. When he responded, she detected an almost amused edge to his voice, as if he were making a private joke. “There is no emotion. There is peace.”

Rey felt the stone fall out of her belly, and suddenly, her body seemed very, very light. She pressed her hand to her lower abdomen to ground herself to the spot where she stood. The Force thrummed under her fingertips. “I am… at peace with this.”

And, for the first time, she was.

***

When Rey had left the grungy hotel room and their marriage bed, as it were, Ben had remarked, his voice soft with tenderness and regret, that they ought to have a honeymoon. She’d kissed his hairline and whispered into it, “I’ll send you coordinates.”

Ben waited for what seemed like an age. The ties binding them together were wound tighter, now, but that only served to constrict his heart in his chest. She was his wife, now. He wanted her by his side always, and she wasn't. Perhaps she didn't want to be.

His comm device beeped as he was unloading crates in a spaceport on Bespin. He pulled it out of his pocket, ignoring the knowing look Han and Chewie exchanged.

Ben frowned at the cryptic message. Rey’s messages were always succinct, and clear. They were coordinates – nothing that could give her away save a few digits revealing her location.

This message was different. _Meet me on the Forest Moon._

She hadn’t sent coordinates, but Ben knew where they would rendezvous next. Endor. He shifted on his feet, unsure of why she would pick that planet. He remembered showing her his memories of it, and feeling her wonder and pleasure at seeing so much green and blue. She’d thought that it was beautiful. It was, of course, but it was a barely populated moon with nothing but trees as far as the eye could see.

His comm device buzzed gently in his palm again.

_I have something wonderful to show you._

***

Ben stood by the shore, hands in his pockets. He hadn’t had to steal – borrow – a ship. Han had given him the Falcon and a curiously proud look. He’d set the old piece of junk down on the shores of a lake he’d swum in as a child.

He could feel it when his wife entered Endor’s atmosphere, although her Force signature had that strangeness about it that it had the night he’d asked her to marry him. Her ship came across the sky like a comet incoming, turning in great, looping circles over him like a bird of prey. He watched it, enjoying its lazy swoops through the clouds.

As she set down on the glassy surface of the lake, the water sprayed up in great arches. The waves lapped at his boots. By the time the ship nudged the pebbled shore, the light was bouncing off the still water.

As Rey climbed out of the slim star-fighter’s cockpit, her Force signature arrested him. It burned hotter than it ever had. It had mutated, in the matter of days that they had been apart. In it, he recognized her – he always would – but he recognized something of himself, too.

He remembered the message she’d sent him. He imagined her whispering those words to him, her voice low and sweet with love. _I have something wonderful to show you._

Ben’s throat closed. The brilliance of her and of the sunlight on the lake surrounded him like a sandstorm on Jakku, and, for a beautiful moment, whited out everything.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What a pleasure this has been. I thank you all sincerely for your investment. It wasn't alway easy to write this story, but your support made it very rewarding to write. 
> 
> Please give me all of your criticism and your commentary. That's the only way I get "paid" for all the time I spend writing. Now that I don't have to worry about spoilers, I will happily respond to any questions and comments.
> 
> Finally, please keep an eye out for my next story. It is as-yet untitled, but it should be up-and-running very shortly, as I've already written the first chapter. 
> 
> STORY NOTES:
> 
> The end of this story is ambiguous, intentionally so. Like in life, there are plenty of lose ends and unresolved conflicts. Will Rey continue to train with Luke, but not join the Order? Will Ben ultimatley be satisfied being a smuggler and a vigilante? Will Rey and Ben live together, or will they continue to cross paths? What would Ben's reaction to her pregnancy be? I didn't want to answer these questions. The characters have truly lost their innocence. They've realized that love and life are complicated and messy. They've had to make tough choices and sacrifice things. None of the characther's futures is certain, but everyone is, as Rey says she is, "at peace."

**Author's Note:**

> Comments make me happy. Happy writers write more.


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